Students Dial Up Latino Voters

In anticipation of next Tuesday’s midterm elections, the Harvard College Democrats have been pooling efforts with Fuerza Latina and Harvard RAZA, targeting Spanish-speaking populations to help address the nationwide problem of low turnout among Hispanic voters.

Last week, the organizations teamed up for the first time in recent memory to co-sponsor a phone-banking session for the Patricia Madrid Congressional campaign in New Mexico. The Dems have been phone-banking for the Madrid campaign every Tuesday since the beginning of the school year.

In 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that people of Hispanic origin represented 8.2 percent of all U.S. citizens but only 6 percent of actual voters. Voter turnout was 47.2 percent among registered Hispanic voters, lower than every demographic except for Asians.

One of the biggest political obstacles for the Latino community is a lack of familiarity with the English language.

“The communication barrier is what’s preventing lots of Latinos from different communities from exercising the political clout commensurate with their numbers,” said Dems Political Director Raquel O. Alvarenga ’07, who is the first person in her immigrant family from El Salvador born in the U.S..

“People were happy that somebody was...trying to get them involved in the political process,” Alvarenga said of her phone-banking experiences with Spanish-speaking voters in New Mexico, where 29 percent of residents speak Spanish at home, according to a 2000 U.S. Census Bureau report.

“Many times they don’t even know what they need to do to request an absentee ballot or to go out to vote,” she added.

Dems Events Director Erika C. Helgen ’08 said having Spanish-speakers from Fuerza and RAZA help phone-bank was “particularly helpful in talking with Latino, especially Spanish-speaking voters, letting them know they are citizens and do have the right to vote.”

Issues pertinent to Latino voters, such as immigration rights, are often overlooked because many Latinos in the U.S. are not citizens, said Fuerza and RAZA member Emily A. Burnor ’08, who participated in the phone-banking initiative.

Many people who she reached turned out to be non-citizens, she said. “Their opinion is not insignificant by any means, but they can’t vote...The U.S. citizens themselves are going to have to decipher how to resolve this issue.”

And immigration policy would best be shaped by Democrats, Burnor said. “One-hundred percent of the Spanish-speaking people I talked to said they would vote Democrat,” she added.

The Dems, Fuerza, and RAZA also explored the political identity of Latinos at a pizza dinner discussion they co-sponsored last Wednesday entitled “Election 2006: What’s at Stake for the Latino Community.”

Issues such as bilingual education, immigration, and the revival of nativism emerged in the forum, which was held in the Adams House Upper Common Room.

The discussion was informal, with students exchanging points and counterpoints. For example, Raul A. Campillo ’09 argued that Latinos should work harder to be respected and recognized as Americans, but was immediately countered by Alvarenga, who contended that as Latinos, “you can still take pride in where you come from and participate in the democratic process.”

After the event, Helgen said that if some candidates are elected to office using nativist and racist rhetoric, it sets “a very bad precedent and could have detrimental effects on our electoral process and our democracy.”

She also emphasized that the Latino community must not be treated as “one bloc” with homogeneous interests.

Americans should recognize that “they are an important part of the United States and that they do have something to contribute,” she said.

—Staff writer Yifei Chen can be reached at chen13@fas.harvard.edu.