ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1980. MERCURIAL LEADER WILLIE VELÁSQUEZ DIED FOUR YEARS LATER AT AGE 44.)

Picking up Political Speed on Unpaved Streets
By William Velásquez

What’s the most enduring political tradition in the Southwest?

The Mexican-American bloc vote?

Racially polarized voting?

These are certainly characteristic of Southwestern politics. There is, however, another more striking and consistent political tradition: unpaved streets on the Mexican-American side of town. It’s almost a political fact of life that the streets where Mexican Americans live won’t be paved.

Quite often the people who live on these streets have had to convince me that they were really streets. In many places the streets honestly look like cow paths.

But it’s those rutted, muddy roads, not the charisma of national candidates or the appointments now and then by a Carter administration that are going to lead Mexican-Americans in this country to their share of the political process.
Those streets are the catalysts that are shaping a force of national significance that won’t turn dormant after election day.

THEY PICK OUR VOTE LIKE RIPE FRUIT

National candidates who have been dropping by the community every four years para pizcar el voto mejicano — to pick the Mexican vote — like ripe fruit are already receiving some shocks, and they will get more of them.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter drew 81 percent of the Mexican-American vote, low by past standards. The only Democratic presidential candidate to do worse was George McGovern. He polled 80 percent on his way to a debacle; Carter was en route to a victory.

This time? Next time?

You cannot talk about what will happen nationally until you view what has been occurring locally.

There, the issues are tangible and immediate: unequal, dual systems for dispensing municipal and county services and benefits; classroom success for the children.

Mexican-American candidates are developing their campaigns and expertise around these issues. They are learning how to fight for these things to improve the lot of the Mexican American, and they are earning their rewards: loyal, broader constituencies.

And they are beginning to win.

In Arizona, 16.6 percent of all officials elected at the local level are now Mexican American. Chicanos make up 18.5 percent of Arizona’s population. That’s approaching parity. In Texas, we have had a 28.5 percent increase in Mexican-American officials elected at the local level in the last four years alone.

SOME COMMUNITIES VOTE AT 90%

When we first began the voter registration drive, however, everyone knew that Chicanos didn’t register or vote.

Why?

Some would maintain that Mexican Americans didn’t appreciate the vote. Others would say we weren’t educated enough, or that we were not sophisticated enough to understand the importance of registering and voting.
I would venture to say that a good number of us felt that way, including our political leadership. I had to wonder whether there was some stronger truth to the charge.

No more.

Now we are observing that some Mexican-American communities are registering and voting at a 90-95 percent level. They are responding to logically presented arguments that tangible improvements are possible with good local leadership. They are electing people who are making things better, and the word of their successes is spreading.

GERRYMANDERING IS OUTRAGEOUS

In fact, the same explosive growth in the black registration and turnout that was witnessed in the last decade is now beginning in the Chicano community. The growth will come only if the people perceive an opportunity for improvement at the local level. It is at the local level, however, that Mexican Americans are gerrymandered in the most outrageous fashion to ensure that we can’t win.

The first 66 Texas counties the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project was asked to evaluate were all gerrymandered against Mexican Americans. California counties, from our studies, are even more gerrymandered than those in Texas.

The director of litigation for SVREP, Rolando Rios, now estimates that 128 counties throughout the Southwest are illegally and unconstitutionally gerrymandered, thus precluding Chicanos from winning local elections. SVREP has participated in over 45 lawsuits to remedy this malapportionment.

REDISTRICTING CASES HARD TO WIN

It’s not an entirely easy task to win redistricting cases.

Crockett County, Texas, is the classic example. A series of elections, election challenges, and four court cases beginning in the early 1970s and stretching to 1978 resulted in two Chicanos winning county commissioner seats. I
n January 1978 the second one, Sostenes De Hoyos lost by 32 votes in an election that the state district court invalidated after hearing testimony substantiating eight major violations of election law, including false registration by Anglos, ballots illegally removed from the ballot box, and color coding of absentee ballots for Mexican Americans.

Of eligible Mexican Americans, 95.2 percent registered to vote, and 88 percent turned out for the election. In the subsequent court-ordered election held in August, 93.6 percent of the eligible Chicanos came out to vote, and De Hoyos won by a narrow margin.

What initially stirred the community?

They wanted to get the streets paved. They wanted their children to have a chance at the good jobs in local government. Simple, basic justice is what Chicanos want, and they want it at home, at the local level.
When the national politicians come calling for the Chicano vote in November, they undoubtedly will be asked what they’re going to do about getting the streets paved.

They had better have an answer.

(William Velásquez was the founder and executive director of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in San Antonio. He died of cancer at age 44 in 1988.)