Recent commentary in the aftermath of the recent Obama victory and the 2006 Democratic Congressional win suggests that the country once again has moved noticeably to the Democrats. This stems from the Iraq War and the Katrina debacle coupled with the economic crisis which appear to have firmly routed George W. Bush’s party, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln. The undeclared and unwinnable war in Iraq took its toll, as it became a war of political attrition as most ‘undeclared’ wars have; like Korea and Vietnam. The leadership disaster during Hurricane Katrina was plainly lethal to Bush 43′s second term.

In 2004, it was reported that Bush won up to 44% of the Latino vote…some challenged these figures but it does seem that at least 40% of the nation’s Hispanic vote went to the GOP in that election. Not even the more popular Ronald Reagan was ever able to garner this percentage among Latinos. With George Bush, the GOP achieved the highest percentage or portion of the Latino vote that it had ever won in any national election. Making it more significant was the tightness of the election in several key states like Ohio. Yet, even as the GOP appeared to be confronting it nadir in the 2008 elections, it is safe to say that just over 30% of the voting Latinos stayed with the GOP. This is a remarkable figure given the circumstances. Hence, this political behavior certainly requires deeper examination.

First, it should be noted that historically (beginning with FDR) the Hispanic vote, which was mostly Mexican-American, tended to go massively with the Democrats. The slow political empowerment of Latinos began as FDR and Truman lifted them out of the Great Depression. These defining moments were not as dramatic as Lincoln beating the Slavocracy of the South and emancipating the African-American from the shackles of slavery. As this feat made all Black-Americans overwhelmingly Republican, there was a prevailing GOP ascendancy for the next seven decades. Yet, FDR’s leadership role in the Great Depression and his wife, Eleanor’s continuous efforts to bring social justice to the African-Americans began a slow movement to attract voting Blacks to the Democratic Party, especially in urban areas.

But it must be recalled that before the Civil War to the 1960′s, the Democratic Party was solidly based in the Jim Crow segregated Southern States; these Bourbon or Moss Back Democrats were in coalition with big city party machines in the North; like Tammany Hall. If one looks back at the record we find that, Pres. Woodrow Wilson was an avowed racist. FDR, though he fully backed his wife’s commitment, was not particularly concerned with the plight of the American ethnic minorities. Yet, President Truman did integrate the Armed Forces after WWII. The record also reflects that during the post war Hispanics, as they became more politically active, tilted toward the Democrats. It should be noted that Eisenhower did draw many Latino votes, but not in significant numbers.

It was the 1960 election of JFK that became the baptism of fire politically for Latino voters nationally. For the first time, the largely Roman Catholic identification of the Latinos with the Democratic candidate was a driving force. Latino elected officials were minimal during the period leading up to the Kennedy-Johnson period. Only New Mexico had elected Hispanics to federal office (US Senator Chavez and Congressman Montoya both Democrats) prior to this. Henry Gonzalez of Texas and Ed Roybal of California were elected in the wake of the JFK-LBJ victory. Subsequently, the assassination of Kennedy, the ascendancy of Lyndon Johnson and his successful accomplishments in civil and voting rights, Martin Luther King’s unspeakable murder and Bobby Kennedy’s assassination solidified both Latinos and Blacks within the Democratic Party.

The first Republican national candidates who truly sought to reach out to Latinos were Nixon and Rockefeller in 1968. The former who came from southern California (and recognized the closeness of his loss to JFK in 1960) acknowledged the potential of the growing Latino vote. Rockefeller, as Governor of New York, had a sizable Puerto Rican constituency which he had courted in his race for governor. He had made several minor appointments within the Puerto Rican community while in state office. Nixon’s awareness of the Latino vote, during his second attempt to become President in 1968, motivated him to make modest efforts to court Latinos in order to avoid all of them going for the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey. Once elected, Nixon began immediately to prepare for his 1972 presidential re-election bid. He made certain that there were Latino groups advocating his re-election. He made high profile appointments and formally created a political position in the White House (although Johnson had done so but not as formally) to have an outreach to the Spanish-speaking groups (as we were referred to before Hispanic became fashionable). Nixon, in his Southern strategy, was focused in winning-over the formerly Democratic South. When President Johnson’s 1965 Civil Rights Public Accommodations Bill was passed into law, he is quoted as saying: “…there goes the South…”  He was referring to the reaction of the southern white Democrats to the empowerment of Blacks and protection of their voting rights. LBJ correctly predicted that the whites in the South would abandon wholesale the Democratic Party. Nixon strategically laid out the plans to permanently capture the South, which had previously hated the GOP for beating the South in the Civil War and imposing Re-Construction.

To be continued…

American Experience executive producer Mark Samuels is cited: “The Hernandez v. Texas story is a powerful reminder of one of many unknown yet hard-fought moments in the civil rights movement. It is easy to forget how far the country has come in just fifty years, reshaping our democracy to include all Americans.” The story is not widely known or appreciated among Latinos most probably because first of all this powerful civil rights case derives from a murder case (Hernandez slayed his boss after a heated argument in a grotty cantina in Edna, Texas) and second: the tragic demise of the lead protagonist Gus Garcia.

As one of two lead lawyers in the case Gus Garcia, a native Texan, easily fits into the pantheon of Latino and American unsung heroes. Garcia, a brilliant lawyer, with almost unmatched legal reasoning along with his equally talented partner, Carlos Cadena, constituted a truly impressive legal team. Both faced the nine justices of the US Supreme Court in January 1954. Cadena opened the argument. One Justice then asked: “Can Mexican Americans speak English?” followed by “are they citizens?” This lack of knowledge stunned Gus Garcia who stood up and brilliantly delivered the argument of his life. Chief Justice Earl Warren allowed him to continue a full sixteen minutes past the allotted time, a concession a witness noted had not been afforded to any other civil rights lawyer before Garcia, including the renowned NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who went on to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Clearly, Garcia’s oratory skills and brilliant legal reasoning impressed the high court.

Unfortunately, the significance of the case is lost in our Latino collective memory. Perhaps as mentioned before the fact that this uniquely Latino civil rights case was the only one to reach the high court and win a favorable ruling for Mexican Americans (but Latinos writ large), yet it is ‘stained’ because it stems from a murder case (Hernandez was ultimately found guilty of murder). And perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that Gus Garcia, a gifted lawyer and a truly Latino asset in our history, winds up becoming a chronic alcoholic who apparently suffered from deep depression, which was further exacerbated by emotional challenges in his personal life. He died prematurely in 1964. By this time, he had become a troubled figure who was disbarred (legal license to practice suspended) and generally considered to have died in a sad and tragic condition.

In sum, a murder case spawned this renowned high court drama, which yield a landmark decision for Latinos.  Yet the defendant was ultimately found guilty and the Garcia tragedy together served to not glorify or single out the high court ruling as a proud moment in our history of  struggle for equality. It should be pointed out that Carlos Cadena did go on in the 1970′s to be elected to the Texas Supreme Court. Gus Garcia became a legend among the Latino leadership in Texas in the late forties and the fifties. He was tall, handsome (with the looks of a Raymond Chandler character in a murder mystery in Los Angeles of the 1930′s and 1940′s), resourceful, charming, articulate and truly the best his generation had to offer. Had he not taken to drinking and self-destructive behavior, which suggest psychological or mental stability issues brought on by depressive bouts of drinking. Politically, he had been elected as the first Latino to the San Antonio School Board in the late forties. He was truly a natural born and most promising leader. Henry B. Gonzalez became his political heir apparent in terms of popularity and stature as the first Mexican-American in Texas elected in 1956 state senator. Henry B led in 1957 the famous several days long filibuster against Jim Crow type legislation in the Texas legislature. He was about the same time denied entry along with his six children and wife to a Texas State Park for being ‘Mexican.’

Basically, the civil rights struggles in Texas of the fifties, which include Garcia, Cadena and Gonzalez as leading protagonists are largely forgotten. Forgotten also is the awareness and willingness in our Latino community to tackle the residual restrictions or manifestation of excluding Latinos from total legal protection under the law. In Washington, too often outsiders are heard to comment: the affirmative action and civil liberties legal efforts rarely if ever involve Latinos. One Deputy Secretary of a leading Cabinet Agency is infamously cited when asked if blacks and women successfully brought suits to promote their cause, then where were the court rulings on redressing Latino employment practices in hiring and promotion, he readily replied: “…you guys do not sue!” Hence, the PBS documentary should reawaken or at least make us reflect in the Latino community how far we have come and how far we still have to go to get equity in the system. The courts plainly remain an option, but our Latino political leadership, especially at the federal level, should be more responsive and sensitive to the existing deficiencies in the systems. With the increasing backlash against immigrants (with a latent anti-Latino/anti-Hispanic sentiment) witnessed in recent years the Latino community faces ever-increasing challenges in the job place, the university admissions, the promotions to military general officer or senior civil servants as well as in the upper echelons of corporate America, as well as available credit, decent housing, health care and primary and secondary school hurdles. Certainly, we must not feel we have to shake the system ‘down,’ but we should shake it ‘up.’

Do watch the PBS Feb 23 program “A Class Apart;” note that it is not the 1940′s Cary Grant WASP film with the same title. This PBS documentary is a timely reminder of what the Latino agenda should include. This includes citing or noting historic events like ‘Hernandez v. Texas’ in children’s and college text books to avoid the loss of essential milestones in the Latino journey.

Thankfully, today Alberto (aka Fredo or Gonzo) Gonzales has resigned his position as the current architect of the police state being constructed by the Bush Cheney administration. He has authorized criminal behavior as White House counsel and has refused to prosecute that same criminal behavior as Attorney General. He has created and navigated legal avenues for Bush Cheney and their administrations to use torture and indefinite detention based on innuendo and suspicion and now as attorney general, he refused to investigate those programs despite Congressional inquiries in these matters.

Gonzales’ objectivity as far back as George W. Bush’s DUI arrest record, the Texas Clemency and Execution Memos, the Texas Youth Commission scandal, the Warrantless NSA Domestic Eavesdropping Program, the denial of right to Habeas Corpus in the U.S. Constitution, the FBI domestic abuses, and the Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys reveal a man completely committed to the erosion of the civil liberties protections that activists in the 60s fought to preserve. The rule of law seems to be a line that Alberto Gonzales is truly committed to blurring. This man could not have resigned soon enough, but all the repercussions of his actions will certainly be felt in the years to come.