By Geraldo Rivera
Fox News Latino (May 26, 2011)

Everyone who has ever watched the telecast of a Puerto Rican Day parade or, better, participated in one, knows we have an exuberant, joyful way of showing off Puerto Rican pride.

This is not to suggest that those rooted in Ireland, Italy, Israel or other nations are shirkers when it comes to celebrating their heritage.

But in this veteran observer’s admittedly chauvinistic opinion, none match the unfettered ebullience of ‘Orgullo Boricua.’ And that pulsing, effervescent Puerto Rican pride will be on vivid display in June when Barack Obama becomes the first president to make an official visit to the Commonwealth since John F. Kennedy stopped by in December 1961.

That JFK visit 50 years ago was a sensation. The young and gracious 35th president was the first Catholic in the Oval Office. And the then mostly Catholic island fell in love and didn’t hesitate to express that unbounded affection when the president stepped off the plane at San Juan Airport.

In those days, Latin America was a Cold War battlefield. The disastrous CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of neighboring Cuba had failed to oust Fidel Castro just a few months before; the Cuban missile crisis was a few months in the future; and Puerto Rico bristled with important military bases to protect the Panama Canal against Soviet encroachment.

To cement the strategic dominance of the U.S. in Latin America, JFK was working hand in hand with legendary governor Luis Muñoz Marín to sell his Alliance for Progress – an initiative that gave aid to countries that joined in the fight against communism – to the region.

Puerto Rico no longer has either the military bases or the strategic importance it did during those turbulent times. The canal no longer belongs to us, relations with Cuba are gradually thawing, and bases like Roosevelt Roads and the island of Vieques are gone.

Puerto Rico is a strategic backwater now. It does, however, retain something of great value to a president seeking re-election.

Although the island’s four million residents are citizens, they cannot vote in U.S. elections. But there are another four million Puerto Rican stateside residents who can. About 725,000 of them now live in the key election battleground of Florida, and President Obama needs those voters if he is to retain the Sunshine State in 2012.

“With his visit, the president makes good on the promise he made during the presidential primaries in 2008 that he would return to Puerto Rico as president,” said the island’s Republican governor Luis Fortuño in the statement announcing the official visit slated for June. “Since the beginning of my administration, we have been working in close collaboration with the president and his administration to make this historic visit a reality.”

I have no doubt that the reception the president will receive will be far better than candidate Obama got during the 2008 Democratic primary in Puerto Rico, when he was soundly beaten by Hillary Clinton, a fact diplomatically unmentioned in the governor’s statement.

And if you think the rousing Irish welcome Mr. Obama received when he drank that pint of Guinness was impressive, wait until he dons a guayabera, eats arroz con pollo, washes it down with a splash of Puerto Rican rum, and salsas with the first lady.

He’ll have Florida in the bag.

Geraldo Rivera is Senior Columnist for Fox News Latino.

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By Jim Newton | jim.newton@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times (May 16, 2011)
By Jim Newton

Imagine if today’s Los Angeles were governed by a white mayor and an all-white City Council. And then imagine if that anomaly was protected by city election rules that virtually guaranteed no Latino candidate could land a spot in elected office. The civil rights community would be apoplectic and the public justifiably enraged.

Now consider Compton, a city that’s about two-thirds Latino but in which no Latino has ever held elected office. Instead, thanks in part to the kind of voting rules that were challenged and abandoned in many cities long ago, an all-black City Council and a black mayor maintain a firm hold on public office.

In Compton, City Council members run in citywide elections, which means all voters can vote in all races. If instead, as happens in Los Angeles, council members represented specific geographic areas and were voted on only by residents of those areas, heavily Latino neighborhoods would have a better chance of electing Latino council members. And then, having cracked the city’s closed politics, a group of experienced officeholders who could vie for mayor and other citywide offices would develop.

Compton’s commitment to at-large voting, which has been challenged in a lawsuit alleging violations of the California Voting Act, is the manifestation of a particularly noxious brand of racial politics that plays out in schools, elections and even civic events. The conflicts are neither new nor deniable. To take just one example: In 1994, when Californians voted on Proposition 187, exit polling found that 64% of Compton’s non-Latino voters supported it; less than 1% of its Latino voters did so. One expert who analyzed Compton’s voting patterns said the evidence of racial balloting was “clear and convincing.”

Meanwhile, the city’s demographics are rapidly changing and apparent everywhere. Barbecue and soul-food restaurants still have their place in the 10-square-mile city of 95,000 residents, but they now stand alongside taco stands and Oaxacan cafes; Stella’s Beauty Salon caters to “hombres, mujeres y ninos.” Evangelical storefront churches draw a multiplicity of faiths, with the Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal M.E. sitting just down the block from Greater Zion Church Family. Rap music thumps from car radios, but so does ranchero. According to the census, more than half of Compton’s families speak Spanish at home.

So why hasn’t that meant an automatic transformation of Compton politics? Some of the city’s Latinos are in the country illegally and thus can’t vote; even those here legally may not be citizens or feel themselves ready to join the electorate. And many are too young to vote. Despite their demographic dominance, Latinos make up only about 44% of Compton’s voting-age population, so the city’s black leadership, by insisting on citywide elections, has been able to dilute Latino voting strength. If Compton were broken into geographic districts, voting-age Latinos would almost certainly be a majority in at least one, and perhaps more (depending on how the lines were drawn). This would give them, finally, a foothold of political influence.

In the civil rights movement of the 1950s, blacks relied on the Constitution and found an ally in the courts. Now, the black leadership of Compton is defending its system in the courts against three Latino plaintiffs seeking to replace Compton’s at-large council elections with district-by-district ballots.

So how do Compton officials explain their opposition to the very process that empowered so many African Americans in an earlier era? I first tried Mayor Eric J. Perrodin. His assistant has a pleasant voicemail message asking callers to leave a name, number and message. Calls, the message promises, will be “graciously returned.” Mine wasn’t.

I also tried asking the city clerk. She was out of town. Her office referred me to the city manager; that office forwarded me to City Atty. Craig J. Cornwell, who was more forthcoming.

In court filings, the city attorney has maintained that the challenge to Compton’s voting rules violates the city charter, which specifically calls for at-large elections and thus can be changed only by a vote. Moreover, he challenges the assumption that Latinos need districts to elect candidates, suggesting instead that boosting turnout would accomplish those ends.

In our conversation, Cornwell elaborated: “We don’t believe that it’s our system that’s the problem. We believe that Compton is plagued with low voter turnout of all ethnicities, including Latino voters.”

Royce Esters, a businessman and civil rights leader who has lived in Compton since 1956, put it more bluntly. Blacks in Compton, he said, “kept on it until we got elected…. Latinos just have to get out there and vote.”

But there’s more to it. Today, the very practices once employed by Southern whites – diluting the voting power of blacks, evading media inquiries, defending their political power against demographic trends – is now the province of Compton blacks. “It’s unfortunate,” said Joaquin G. Avila, executive director of the National Voting Rights Advocacy Initiative at Seattle University Law School and a lawyer in the Compton case. City leaders could open the city to political diversity, make it a model of inclusion. But they won’t. As Avila noted, “They’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

It is, he added a bit ruefully, an example of “one minority politically oppressing another minority.”

The judge in the voting rights case declined to order an immediate change in Compton elections as the plaintiffs requested. So, on June 7, Compton voters will go to the polls to select a new council member (one incumbent retained his seat in April by winning a majority of the votes cast in the first round). Voters in the election will pick between two black candidates. No Latino made the runoff.

Marlene Peralta
watching Black in Latin America on PBS
April 19 at 8:00pm via BlackBerry · Like ·

Dulce Mateo jajaj a I just posted the same thing
April 19 at 8:01pm · Like

David Betancourt Not coming on until 9 over here.
April 19 at 8:04pm · Like

Franklin Sanchez ‎30 minutes into the show and they have so many things wrong. At the beginning they present Son(Cuban) as Merengue. The other thing is that they want to “Americanize” the perception of being Black on another country making DR look like a country with racially unaware citizens.
April 19 at 8:34pm · Like

Marlene Peralta I agree on the inaccuracies Franklin but isn’t our country racially on denial? I mean I have to say that’s changing now but with inaccuracies and all he is on the right track
April 19 at 8:56pm · Like

Franklin Sanchez He has some valid points but he only dedicated 20 minutes( I timed him hehehe) to DR and the rest of the show was dedicated to Haiti. Furthermore, you cannot impose(Americanize) your belief of what black is on other people of a different co…
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April 19 at 9:28pm · Like · 1 person

Marlene Peralta Where does it aknowledge that Sanchez or Luperon were black? Yes they looked black on photos but was the racial factor discussed on history books?
April 19 at 9:33pm · Like

David Betancourt I know this from my mothers (black side) of the family. Heard it a zillion times from mis tias morenas americanas. They don’t like that some Dominicans don’t identify themselves as black. It’s like “if I’m black you gotta be black too”. To which I always say “yo soy boricua. Pq tu no sepas!”. Jajaja.
April 19 at 9:36pm · Like

Marlene Peralta LOL @David—-thats the response we tend to give when asked about race:” I’m dominican….a percent spanish, taino and some african…..when african is the heaviest influence we have
April 19 at 9:40pm · Like

Marlene Peralta ‎@Franklin…it doesn’t stop there….watch the one on Brazil…a country that has 130 categories of black tones, which I also interpret as a negation of their blackness
April 19 at 9:52pm · Like

Franklin Sanchez ‎@Marlene- Sanchez and Luperon’s background is clearly stated in black and white in Dominican history books. When you visit La Puntilla in Puerto Plata you can clearly see that Luperon’s statue looks nothing like a white nor black guy. The …
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April 19 at 10:06pm · Like

Marlene Peralta U and I r going to write a book here…..yes the statues were black but his point was people like you and I do not embrace we r black although we look like one….and yes the black experience differs country by country but that doesn’t take…
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April 19 at 10:13pm · Like

Franklin Sanchez Marlene- what can I embrace about being black? when you come into this world everything is pretty much predetermined. I did’nt get to choose culture, folklore or even geographical location of birth. As far as I know, the world population mu…
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April 19 at 10:32pm · Like

Marlene Peralta You r right…..we have both..that’s why we r a mixed culture predisposed to only celebrate half of who we r…..and Americans take advantage of that to again impose their views….the sad thing is they have a strong argument this time
April 19 at 10:37pm · Like

Franklin Sanchez Exactly, it’s all about who has the power to influence the masses. Like we say: “Para el gusto se hicieron los colores.” Let people be brown, chocolate or whatever they want to call it.
April 19 at 11:14pm · Like

Judith Escalona The Dominican Republic’s culture and history are given short shrift. Gates even slightly mocking as he frames this complex history through a simple, assymetrical American lens. This history awaits to be told outside the facile black and white binary. Indeed, where are the “indios” in all of this? Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that salsa they were playing, not merengue.
April 20 at 11:39am · Like

Marlene Peralta it was “son” Judith
April 20 at 11:49am · Like
Judith Escalona hmm. thought it was guanguanco in a more fused salsa form–heavy brass. And the dancing, didn’t seem much a merengue either! In any case, a poor choice for Gates who was trying to exemplify the merengue. What was the name of the band?
April 20 at 12:03pm · Like

Judith Escalona I’d like to turn a Latin American lens on the U.S. and see what comes up.
April 20 at 12:12pm · Like

Franklin Sanchez ‎@Judith- I think we would see some interesting things. My point is that you can’t “export” the enclosed vision that Americans have towards color to other countries.
Blacks in DR have never suffered from law backed segregation, unlike African Americans who couldn’t even use the same bathrooms let alone sit where they wanted in a bus.
April 20 at 1:40pm · Like

Judith Escalona The point is to examine the two racial systems and how they functioned within their respective civil societies. Both you and Marlene are right. But if the history of these two systems are left out, you will be debating till you both turn blue. And, North Americans, especially Aftrican Americans, will continue to mock you out of the same ahistorical, asymmetrical perspective.
April 21 at 7:35am · Like

Judith Escalona Puerto Ricans had a similar experience in relation to African Americans in the sixties and till this day. I have personally experienced Aftrican Americans argue that all Puerto Ricans are black which is as absurd as saying all North America…
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April 21 at 7:43am · Like

Judith Escalona The complexity of the Spanish system can be seen in Casta paintings which the Spanish used to actually document the continuous mixtures in the “New World”: Spanish (the Spanish referred to “Spanish,” not “White,” at least in the early peri…
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April 21 at 8:01am · Like

Judith Escalona Enough said. Sorry, I didn’t break this up into paragraphs. Marlene, these early categories were part of the Spanish CENSUS taking. At the meeting Tuesday, I raised this idea but didn’t fully articulate it because it would have taken too long. Jeje.
April 21 at 8:05am · Like

Judith Escalona This is all a very painful and hurtful history. I researched this (not thoroughly but sufficiently) for a mini-series I collaborated in and believe me I cried frequently. And we were only looking at the areas that became the U.S.
April 21 at 8:20am · Like

Franklin Sanchez ‎@Judith- Sorry for the tardiness in replying, I’ve been disconnected for a while. Just wanted to say thank you for your contribution to this post.
4 hours ago · Like

Judith Escalona Thank you Franklin. I’m sure we each have much to relate. A recent reflection: The denial of being racially and culturally mixed encourages segregation and domination by one group or another.