There is a growing minority population in the United
States today. This new minority group is Hispanic or can be called Latino.
Most of the group does not speak English, so they are unable to understand
a lot of the things in America like television, radio and even simple things
as shopping. If this group is not able to understand these simple things,
how are they ever going to understand American politics? The elections
just took place, so what if a lot of Latinos were not able to vote because
they did not understand the ballot o have no been able to understand anything
about the candidates to make a logical choice for the Presidency. If the
Hispanics do care and are interested in American politics something should
definitely be done to accommodate this gap. There should definitely be
better advertising and better communication to improve this ever-present
problem.
Even though there are big
gaps, people are working on narrowing them down. In the latest election
there have been several television advertisments in Spanish that were aimed
towards the Hispanic(Latino) population. One of these advertisments is
from the MTV’s Rock the Vote Campaign. One particular advertisement is
with the Santana Soundtrack and attractive actors which give it an edge
of a rock video. This shows and angry Latino G.I. close to a swamp in the
middle of the Vietnam War, who says: “Man, I didn’t vote for this,” then
another comes in and says: “We don’t vote. That’s why we’re stuck here,
chapete! If we don’t vote we’ll be stuck here to the year 2000.” Then comes
in a voice that says: “Over 170,000 Latinos fought in Vietnam. Today over
5 million Latinos are not registered to vote.” This particular advertisment
is aimed more towards the young Latino population. Another advertisement
is where a young woman named Hope Sanchez finds out that here real name
is Esperanza, which in Spanish means Hope. She finds out that her parents
were just trying to protect her from being discriminated against. She then
says, “My voter registration card still says hope, but today I’m going
to vote for Esperanza.” Finally another advertisement is when a little
Latino boy is watching his grandfather read a voter registration form,
the little boy than asks: “What are you looking at Grandpa?” “Your future,”
his grandfather replies. These 3 televison advertisements are very helpful
in getting this growing minority population to vote.
There are not only ads on
television that are getting more and more Latinos to vote, but there are
active people out there doing something about the gap in communications
and simply just trying to fill in some of the missing pieces of information.
In Watsonville, for example, volunteers will be placing booths at shopping
malls and supermarkets. There will also be motor registration, where volunteers
will be driving through the nearby communities with tons of registration
forms to be passed out. There is also a Television channel called Univision,
which is trying to unite the Latinos and keep them better informed on what
is happening. There are also newspapers like La Opinion in Los Angeles
and many more in the main states that have the most of the Latino population,
these are California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Arkansas and
Colorado. There are increasing numbers of young Latinos trying to get others
involved in this election. There was a pep rally/campaign to draw out the
young Latino vote at Los Angeles Valley College. This rally showed that
there are yoing Latino leaders who are making differences in informing
others about the election. At this rally a Francisco Martinez, 23, a field
deputy for Los Angeles Councilman Alex Padilla said, “Su voto es su voz”,
which translates to “Your vote is your voice.” In the past months the Southwest
Voter Education Project has registered about 2,500 voters through many
events. These young leaders are great influences on others and are bringing
out more and more Latino votes. They have found their way to communicate
to them from rallies to commercials.
In the weeks prior to the
election both George W. Bush and Al Gore are trying to sweet-talk Latinos.
They are now after this group because they make up about 12% of the American
population, especially in the 8 main states mentioned earlier. George W.
Bush and Al Gore have both stated that they are for bilingual education
and other immigration issues which are two very important issues to the
Hispanic population. George W. Bush has got his nephew, whose mother is
Mexican, to help out with his campaign. During his bilingual speech at
the GOP conventions he stated, “Mi tio ha creado mas oportunidades que
otro politico.”, which means,” My uncle has created more opportunities
than any other politician.” Bush also has done TV interviews in Spanish
and speaks rather nicely. Al Gore is not far behind. He was at a certain
outdoor rally in a hot jalapeño 105 degrees, where he made good
points, in English, like new monies for public schools and more job training
in border towns and stronger support for bilingual education, which he
has worked to fight for in the private parts of the White House. However
the first thing that Gore tried to do was to make a joke in Spanish. He
is not a Spanish Speaker, but he said: “Que felicidad me da estar aqui
con ustedes,” “aunque sea un poco caliente!” which means, “It’s nice to
be here with you… although it’s a little hot!”. As can be seen both candidates
have tried to sweet-talk and attract the Latino voters.
To really see how much the
Latino population really knew about the American politics and the candidates
for the Presidency a survey
was
done. This was a randomly distributed survey that I went out and gave to
25 Hispanics at different locations in Lumberton, NC between 1:00 pm and
4:00 pm on the 30th of November, 2000. This was a written survey. The surveys
were conducted at three Hispanic stores, one Mexican restaurant, Food Lion
Supermarket and a K-Mart shopping center. The results were very interesting.
Out of the 25 surveys, three of them spoke English and the rest of them
spoke only Spanish. This was the first and by far the most important questions
in helping to determine the Hispanic vote. Startling, out of the 25 Latinos
interviewed only 1 Latino voted, and this one Latino also was one of the
three that spoke English. This relates back to the question to is there
really enough information to the Non-English speaking Latinos. Evidently
there is some, twenty out of the twenty-five have seen some kind of promotion
about the candidates for the Presidency. They at least stated that they
know who the two candidates are, but know next to nothing about what they
stand for on certain issues. With the knowledge of the candidates it helps
to bring out the Latino vote, but as can evidently be seen here there needs
to be more information and communication her in North Carolina and probably
other states, not only those that live in Florida, Arkansas, New York,
Illinois, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and California. In the survey, twenty-five
out of twenty-five answered Yes to the question, “Are you interested in
the politics of this country?”. This shows that politics is very important
to the Latino voters. All of them also answered yes to the question, Would
you be more interested in the politics of this country if there were more
promotions and advertisements in Spanish.
This has proven the fact that
the latino population is interested in American politics so more should
be done to better inform this group of people. Again one person voted out
of the twenty-five that were surveyed. The ones that did not vote had many
various reasons. Many of the Latinos said that they were not citizens of
the United States, which evidently is a good reason not to vote. However
there were more disturbing answers. The most disturbing was, "No crea que
sea necesario" and "Por indecision sobre los candidatos.". Which translate
to, " I did not think that it is necessary" and "because I was undecided
about the candidates." This is very disturbing to know that a minority
group may think that their votes do not count so the did not vote. Like
stated earlier, "your vote is your voice". This is evident in Florida where
the election is down to a few hundred votes, of course every vote matters
and it is necessary. The other answer shows directly that there is a problem
with communication to the Latino voters. If there is not promotions or
advertisements of the candidates in Spanish, how are the Hispanic voters
going to be able to decide who they want to be President. This is a problem
that needs to be addressed.
There is communication and
advertisements for Latinos today, but is there enough? No there is not!
There is good communication in the states of Florida, Arizona, California,
Illinois, New York, Texas, Colorado and Arkansas. However this is only
8 states out of the 50 in the United States. So now the questions are:
what are the problems? and, What can be done to fix them?
Obviously there is not enough
communication to the Spanish speaking community outside of these 8 states.
There are no TV ads or debates that are dubbed in Spanish. The ballots
are in English and so the Latinos cannot read them. I assume that
at the booths, few if any Americans can help the Latinos by speaking their
Language so it is hard for them to follow the directions if they attempt
to vote. These are the main problems that need to be dealt with.
There are many ways of dealing with these
problems. Start to make recordings of the debates and play them on
Univision, the Spanish channel, or simply be able to put the TV on closed
caption and have the wording in Spanish. In all of these 8 states
there needs to be more representatives of the Candidates enforcing their
candidates, but simply informing them on certain issues. This is
a very simple task that needs to be done. When the Hispanics do go
to vote and noone speaks their language, someone needs to be there to translate
and help explain the ballots. There could be ballots that are bilingual
or simply have separate ballots for the Spanish speaking voters.
These seem to be very simple problems that need
to be taken care of to help the Spanish speaking voters. If this
country is really an equal opportunity country we need to, as a nation,
help the non-English speaking citizens be able to exercise their rights
as citizens. At least there has been a start made in those earlier
mentioned 8 states, but it is not over until all Hispanics in all 50 states
have the equal opportunities like everyone else.
Fineman, Howard http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/fulltex…s%20and%20the20%Election&fuzzyTerm=
O’Conner, Anne-Marie http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/fulltex…s%20and%20the20%Election&fuzzyTerm=
Torres, Mc Nelly http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/fulltex…s%20and%20the20%Election&fuzzyTerm=
Kondo, Annette http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/fulltex…s%20and%20the20%Election&fuzzyTerm=
