I think that Deutsch probably rationalized using the “coconut” term because Rubio has expressed rather conservative views, especially in regards to immigration. But again, this illustrates that not all Latinos are immigration or pro-migrant friendly. Deutsch has since apologized for using the term. Hopefully, Deutsch will not make this kind of silly remark again. He reveals how little he knows about Latinos and the extent that the traditional media misconstrues our identities and issues.

Finally, I don’t even know if Marco Rubio would consider himself to be “dark” or “brown.” I know that some people claim to be “brown and proud,” but typically that is an idea expressed by Mestizo Latinos. Our colonial history has made us rather color sensitive. If we are going to go back to putting candidates through a skin color monitor, I keep going back to Rubio’s opponent, Charlie Crist, who seems to be sporting his own “tan,” but isn’t being compared to tropical produce. In comparison, Rubio looks pretty light in my view. What do you think?

Photo: Charlie Crist on the left, Marco Rubio on the right

Author Peter Dreier penned a response to the Los Angeles magazine’s “Failure” article framing Villaraigosa’s accomplishments in the political climate of larger failures attributed to former President George W. Bush, the governor, and the state legislature. The first part of the piece tries to put the plight of the city and Villaraigosa in that context. It also discusses many initiatives started by the Mayor that are still being implemented, so we cannot definitively say what the end result will be. Also glaringly absent from the piece is the disappointment that many in Los Angeles and in the greater Latino community have felt regarding the Mayor’s personal indiscretions and news of yet another girlfriend, while his divorce from wife Corina Villaraigosa is not yet finalized. The mayor has been criticized for time spent away from City Hall, but it seems that he has plenty of time for photo ops and dating. This playboy persona doesn’t add to his image of success in my view and doesn’t endear him to many of the more family oriented citizens of Los Angeles.

I do think that the suggestions for what Villaraigosa can do in his second term, as offered by Dreier in the article, are good ones. The four suggestions include: making the city cleaner and greener, attracting more green jobs, push for more housing (especially a mixed income housing ordinance), and making neighborhoods more livable with improved public transit. Hopefully, Villaraigosa will take these suggestions in stride, but many still wonder if he will hit the campaign trail and run for governor instead.

Menendez, a  New Jersey Democrat,  is highly regarded by the Washington power brokers and well prepared especially on economics. He sits on key Committees of the Senate: the Banking and the Budget Committees as well as Energy and the Foreign Relations Committees. Menendez is perceived as a mover and shaker on each one. Sadly, no other Latino (out of nearly thirty Congress members and Senators) is considered to be a real power figure. From his perch on Foreign Affairs in both the House and Senate, he always questioned the State Department’s poor employment record on Latinos. The key to his success is reading the legislation before him,  mastering the subject matter, and surrounding himself with the most clever young minds to staff his office and committees. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus writ large (see Congressman Joe Baca for example) is viewed as parochial and leaves town at the first opportunity to seek comfort back home in the barrio precincts. This is great for constituencies, but it is not the most recommended way to move forward if you want to make a difference in Washington, D.C. 

Speaking of insider games and access to power, many Washington insiders view the Latino constituency as growing in size impressively, but still the Hispanic community, as a whole, does not significantly contribute funding to political causes and charities like other ethnic groups do. Worse we Latinos do not vote at a level that moves the white establishment to feel the Latino time has come. The result is that we are not taken seriously, yet Latinos are at every awards’ dinners and gala receptions. The normal fare for the Hispanic political and bureaucratic denizens of Washington are heard to repeatedly state: we will overcome with our numbers. Fact is that only the Cuban Americans with their ‘exile’ mentality instead of the traditional immigrant mindset have been in the last 25 years the only Hispanic group to grab the white establishment ‘s attention in a notable way in both parties: they possessed a sizable voting block in one pivotal swing state (Florida) in Presidential elections (the sum of their principal  political muscle). Hence, when the National Cuban-American Foundation emerged in the early ’80s with the late Jorge Mas Canosa as its head, this segment of the Latino community was heard and felt in Washington: not only as a voting block in swing state but they raised serious money for both political parties.

In 1992 and 1994, Mas Canosa supported Jesse Helms and raised money for him and also got behind Bill Clinton and tilted the state toward him in 1992 as well as Democrat Governor Chiles in Florida over Jeb Bush in 1994. Mas Canosa initially hired lawyers from the Israeli Lobby to help set up his foundation. He would teasingly say that he would be like the Jewish Lobby, but only inversely: the Jewish Lobby bought Democrats and rented Republicans. Mas Canosa would buy Republicans and rent Democrats. He was considered the only true Hispanic political power broker in the last forty years: he could deliver money and votes with perfect timing at the right place. After Mas Canosa’s death in the late 1990s, Jeb Bush and his Cuban crony Congressman Lincoln Diaz Balart successfully teamed up to destroy the Cuban American Foundation or at least divide it and render it largely impotent for its perfidious bipartisanship. With the exception of Mas Canosa, other Latino leaders largely have been elected politicians with great after-dinner grandiloquence, but they are not power brokers. 

Congresswoman Hilda Solis is generally viewed as the sharpest Latina knife in the drawer in Washington. The Latino in Congress with the most powerful committee assignment is Silvestre Reyes, Chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, a most mysterious committee and riven with speculation of its stealth presence. Hence, Reyes’ committee is not a particularly suitable platform for the Latino groups’ attempts to grandstand the most recent Latino accomplishment or statistics demonstrating our “emerging power.” It can be demonstrated that Latinos make a difference. The Cuban Americans, despite the weakening of its main political vehicle, the Cuban American Foundation, consists of about 1.2 million people out of the over 45 million Latinos in the country. Cuban Americans count two US Senators (Menendez (D) and Martinez (R)) and four Congresspersons (Sires (D), Mario Diaz Balart (R), Lincoln Diaz Balart (R) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R). They have matched the Greek Americans for effective political efforts. They are about the same size in population as the Cubans and have had senators and congressmen plus two serious presidential candidates (Dukakis and Tsongas). Mexican Americans constitute about 65% of the Latinos in the country and have 17 congresspersons and one US Senator. Puerto Ricans have a total of three congresspersons. In the end, Washington is about becoming or placing your self or your person as a gatekeeper to policy decision-making especially in the economic regulatory sphere (and how it effects you constituency).

One goal in this Obama Administration is for the Latino community to have the first Hispanic named to the ultimate power entity (regulatory board) in the US: the Board of the Federal Reserve in Washington. The Mexican American, the biggest segment of the Latino population, should become more cohesive in order to attain maximum capability to manifest top cover for its appointees and recommended candidates for appointments. These Chicano congresspersons have shown consistently the inability to project real and sustained power in Washington. Simply the first thing is to master the establishment game being played out. The pool of Hispanic federal employees both career and politically appointed  is below par in corresponding to the population nationally. The main reason: no top cover from the Congress or higher circles in any administration. I will comment more on this later. The figures for Hispanic federal employees are appalling.

The Congressmen heard three hours of informal testimony describing the unjust tactics used by federal agents in the May raid at the Agriprocessors Meat Plant, the country’s largest Kosher meatpacking plant, in which almost 400 arrests were made.

The testimony became emotional as women described how their husbands had been detained, minors working in horrendous conditions, and the overall impact on families and the community at large.

I’m hopeful that Congressmen Baca, Gutierrez, and Sires will act upon the testimony that they heard and do everything they can to stop the immigration raids. As is evidenced in the Postville, IA community, these raids do not work and only place blame on these victims of economic turmoil instead of the large businesses that hire them.  

More than 300 of the people arrested in the raids were convicted of criminal aggravated identity theft, which requires one to knowingly steal a person’s identity for personal such as to run up credit. Congressman Gutierrez stated that many of the immigrants who were arrested were likely illiterate and could not have knowingly used someone else’s identity. Usually, undocumented immigrants are charged with a noncriminal offense and are deported.

Sometimes our leaders need to make personal appearances in places where our community feels pain. Congressmen Baca, Gutierrez, and Sires don’t represent Postville, Iowa, but they represent areas with substantial immigrant populations who are subject to experiencing similar ICE enforcement actions. Hopefully, this visit will help these men become more forceful advocates for just immigration reform.

On Sunday, there was a rally spearheaded by the Jewish Community Action group of St. Paul, Minnesota to draw attention to the situation in Postville. The Jewish Community Action, led by Vic Rosenthal, was joined by other groups from Chicago and Wisconsin. Again, we witness another positive Jewish-Latino coalition building opportunity, which I think is great, but I wonder if any of the national Latino rights organizations sent any representatives to Postville this past weekend. Perhaps one of my readers will know.

Photo Credit: WCFCourier.com, Jens Manuel Korgstad

In the spirit of highlighting what some of the Hispanic Caucus members could or should be doing to better our lives, I thought that I would focus on Representative Hilda Solis (D-CA) and the legislation that she’s introducing with Congressman Waxman (D-CA) and Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) to establish safety standards for chemicals used in baby bottles, children’s toys and other products. There have been reports that the plastic chemical chemical bisphenol A, used in water bottles, linings of cans, baby bottles, etc., causes pre-cancerous tumors in rats. There are 80,000 chemicals used to produce products in our homes, and the EPA is only required to do tests on 200 of those. I would hope that there is a certain safety standard when it comes to water bottles, baby bottles, and toys. The least we can do as a society is give our children non-toxic items to consume from and play with. The Kids Safe Chemical Act would create a safety standard each chemical on the market and shift the burden from the EPA to the chemical manufacturers to determine a chemical’s safety. The bill would give the EPA the ability to chemicals that do not meet their safety standard.

This piece of legislation is important. With the increases in various cancers, links have been established between toxic chemicals in products and in our environment. The Latino population is also relatively young, so there are thousands of babies who are drinking out of bottles and playing with toys. Also, Hilda Solis has a good strategy in partnering with two prolific legislators. Lautenberg has been involved in environmental causes and has over 20 years of legislative experience at the federal level. Waxman is also considered to be a very influential and effective legislator, and he’s also been in Congress for around 30 years. The newer members can have more success working with more established legislators. This also looks like another successful Latino-Jewish partnership in the making, as both Waxman and Lautenberg are practicing Jews.

Photo Credit: Washington Post

This isn’t the first time in recent history that the AJC has reached out to the Latino community. Last year at UC Irvine, there was a conference, Latinos and Jews: A Conference on Historical and Contemporary Connections, which was sponsored by the UC Irvine Center for Research on Latinos in a Global Society and the AJC.