The Power Of Latino Majority Cities

The presence of Latino leaders in all levels of government is necessary in order to have advocates who will represent the needs of the Latino community. Although the Latino population is on the rise and quickly becoming one of the largest ethnic minorities in the United States, the ethnic and racial backgrounds of leaders in government positions are not reflective of our nation’s diversity. Leadership can be developed within the Latino community by individuals who are active participants, have strong roots in their community, and

Throughout this first chapter of Latino Americans the key points in my opinion were the following. Starting with the origin story of the Americas, the book mentions there might not be a definitive starting point because there “500 nations in North America before a European ship ever dropped anchor off the Eastern Seaboard” (Suarez 3). The book from this point on chronologically starts narrating, first about 55 years before Protestant refugees from Mayflower ever stepped on American soil, a Spanish sailor Pedro Menendez de Aviles forced French protestants from their Florida coast settlement to then stablish St. Augustine. From this point the book continues to tell the stories of Juan de Oñate, from witnessing the founding of Santa Fe, the oldest capital of North America, to exploring more than half a dozen of American states, he is one of the most fundamental conquistadors who is the least

Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. By David G Gutiérrez. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Latino-Americans are affected by outward sprawl and the development of smart growth; yet, Latinos face economic and racial disparities in both rural and urban settings. Although Latinos have an affinity for new urbanism and the city, Latino families are moving outward into the suburbs which the population numbers are almost equally divided between city and suburbs (Pastor 82). The growing Latino population in the suburbs shows the sense of community and the strong ties to their agriculture and rural background. Nonetheless, the Latino urban communities are facing poverty and economy issues while Latino suburbans are making a life for themselves. To address urban problems affecting race, urban cities should include equity-oriented regionalism within their government; equity-oriented regionalism is attentive to economic and environment problems in the city while focusing on race (Pastor 76). One subdivision of equity-oriented regionalism is municipality-based regionalism which stresses mutual benefits for inner-city and suburb cooperation in order to make urban communities stronger (Pastor 77). Urban minorities face many racial

Even by the 1930s, this was particularly among young people who, “born and educated in the United States, demanded to be included in the city’s future … ” (Sanchez 226). At a crucial meeting of Mexican-Americans in 1927, facing an Anglo led municipal incorporation move that would have raised taxes and driven them out, many Mexican-American leaders opposed applying for U.S. citizenship. Even though it would have given them more of a target, specifically, the right to vote on a subsequent ballot measure. The affront to Mexico and their heritage was, for them, a crime that outweighed the benefits (Sanchez 4).

In April of 2008 the Board of Supervisors met again to vote on the motion to raise taxes and retain the “probable cause” mandate. However, this time around the opposing side was no longer the Latino community. In April the sides consisted of “Help Save Manassas”, Greg

In 2008, African-American presidential nominee Barack Obama garnered 67% of the Latino vote. In his bid for re-election, President Barack Obama acquired 71% of the Latino vote (Pew Research Center). With these statistics in mind, one can conclude that there has been a consistent growing pattern of continued co-operation between blacks and Latinos at the national level. This is in complete contrast however, to the mindset of some observers who believed that Latinos would not come out in the numbers they did because of racial bias and because of the fact that Obama received much less support amongst Latinos in the democratic primaries when faced against Hilary Clinton (Hero & Preuhs, p.3). Many people mistakenly thought this to be so because

Hartford is the home to the highest percentage (27%) of Puerto Ricans in the country (Cruz, 5). Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans still face myriad challenges with respect to the integration and acceptance of their culture in Hartford. Although the PR community is only two generations old, Puerto Ricans have managed to both organize and mobilize in this relatively short time (Cruz, 2). Puerto Ricans have focused closely on their ethnic identity because they viewed their incorporation into the political sphere occurring only by means of asserting their difference (Cruz, 10). They have made their mark on politics in Hartford through demographic growth, development of leadership in the community, and their

Throughout the 20th century, Los Angeles emerged as a place of multiculturalist struggles. One of these struggles, was that of the Mexican population, which is what the book Mi Raza Primero focuses on. In Mi Raza Primero by Ernesto Chavez, Chavez successfully argues how the collapse of the Chicano movement resulted from the failure to identify the multi-faceted and dynamic/heterogeneous nature of the ethnic Mexican community. He argues how this failure resulted in a movement that shared a strong sense of cultural nationalism, yet differed in tactics and goals. Chavez uses the examination of La Raza Unida Party and Brown Beret recruitment literature to help support his argument. Specifically, Chavez focuses on the voting data from the late

This research examines the disjuncture between Hispanic strength in population and Hispanic participation in politics. I examine the nature of this disjuncture: its severity, its causes, and its consequences. Hispanics currently comprise 11.2% of the U.S. population, but the Hispanic vote in the 1998 elections comprised only 4.7% of all ballots cast. The situation is even bleaker when considering Hispanic representation in Congress. Currently, less than four percent of U.S. House members are Latino. Add to that clear disjuncture the fact that two of the Hispanic Congressmen do not even possess the ability to vote and that there is not a single Hispanic Senator, and we see that

A diverse minority group of Latino and Spanish-speaking peoples has played an important part of what it means to be American and what it means to be a citizen in the United States today. Moving into the future, in order to analyze the trajectory that this group is in, we must first understand the group’s history in the United States and in territories that would become the United States. In addition, we must look at the origins of the most recent wave of Latino immigration in order to understand their current effect on American society and the intersection between both minority and majority groups. Finally, we get to the apex of this investigation: what lies in the future for Latino Americans in the United States? Although Latino

Many workers work in jobs that pay them under the table or in horrible conditions. “Latino households can expect to earn 70 cents to a dollar less than the average white person makes. Hispanic households make 12 cents to a dollar less than white non-Hispanic people” (Schaefer, 2012, P. 224). With Latinos and Hispanics working under the table, they are not making as much as they would make if they were earning a paycheck legally. Since they are also sending money home to their families they have very little left of what they do earn for themselves. “Out of the last quarter century, the proportion of Latinos in poverty has been two or three times that of white non-Hispanics” (Schaefer, 2012, P. 224). With the average American battling to stay above the poverty line, more of the Latino and Hispanic communities are below it because of the financial obstacles in the way. Latino and Hispanic populations have been rapidly growing in the United States. “In 1975 congress addressed citizens with multilingual backgrounds” (Schaefer, 2012, P. 226). Many Latino and Hispanic Americans want to become legal so they can participate in the political position of being a United States citizen. Latino and Hispanic Americans want to be able to vote in upcoming elections. Since the increase in their population and the decision of congress in 1975; more ballots are being made to be English and Spanish depending on the particular country, city or state (Schaefer, 2012, P.

State institutions had to create policies in order to deal with the changing economy. The first approach was using neoliberal state ideology and policy which aimed to decrease the role of the state in providing social services and regulatory oversight of economic markets. The second approach was to adopt economic policies that promoted the redistribution of wealth upward. Thus leading to a greater concentration of wealth at the top end of the class pyramid. This restructuring on the state level affected Latinos in various ways, it decreased the amount of social services available to them, created harsher immigration policies, criminalized undocumented Latinos, and deteriorated the physical community spaces and infrastructures in Latino

The United States of America is considered a melting pot of heritages and nationalities from all around the world. There is no official language, and no one culture all citizens abide by. Despite the fact that everyone in this country is different from one another, there is still a constant uniform citizen that has a more favorable position. This citizen is white, English-speaking, and somehow always in the front of the public sphere. In the recent years, there has been an increasingly dominant Latino presence in America. Their strength in numbers challenges there being a poster American citizen, and that that citizen will remain white. When working to assimilate to America’s “culture,” Lations seem to believe that there is one America, within which people speak a singular language and experience one culture. The pressure to assimilate stems from the white citizens of the country feeling threatened when there is a new culture and language, which they do not understand. As a result they feel personally threatened by the people who can speak both Spanish and English, and their response response involves marginalization and the obvious exclusion of Latino groups in the United States. There is a phenomenon, cultural citizenship, where Latinos perform their cultural practices to stretch their identity into the states, and practice their right to be authentic members of their community.

“In the context of urban history, infrastructure can make or break a community. In the United States, the historical development of urban infrastructure has both formed and followed the inscriptions of race, class, and gender on the urban landscape. Ample in more affluent communities, usually absent or minimal in historic concentrations of urban poverty, infrastructure does not serve its public equally. Some cities have a more equitable distribution of infrastructure than others, but many urban neighborhoods remain woefully underserved,” (Avila 4-5). My hometown of Tolleson, Arizona is a small city of six thousand, five hundred residents with a predominantly Mexican population, with nearly 78% of the residents declaring themselves as Mexican in the 2010 census. The focus of my research will be on the power of Latinx representation Latinx-majority cities’ governments, using Tolleson as a special case study, whose city council is majority Mexican.