Population Soars, but Political Power Lags

By: Carlos Hernández GómezThe Fiesta Boricua crowd was a mix of white, brown and black faces on Sept. 2 in Humboldt Park. Puerto Rican flags waved alongside banners for peace. Old men sold homemade coconut ice cream, pushing carts past food stands selling roasted pork and fried plantains. People danced salsa in the blocked-off streets.


And politicians were at work. The stage was filled with familiar Puerto Rican faces: U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, Alderman Billy Ocasio, Cook County Commissioner Robert Maldonado and state Rep. Willie Delgado.

Next to them stood U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate. The Serbian-American joined the others in appealing for peace in Vieques, Puerto Rico, site of a controversial U.S. Navy bombing range. Blagojevich waved the single-starred, red, white and sky blue Puerto Rican flag as he called out in halting Spanish, “Paz para Vieques,” or “Peace in Vieques.”

With a gubernatorial primary in March, Blagojevich can’t ignore Latinos, the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the United States and in Chicago. Neither can any politician seeking office in the Chicago area or statewide—who wants to win.

In the past 20 years, Cook County’s Latino population has grown by 115 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. As a result, Latino leaders expect to make unprecedented gains in city and state government—adding as many as six predominantly Latino city wards and six districts in the state House and Senate.

But some leaders and experts wonder whether Latinos are ready to make political capital out of their numbers or to push their agenda on such issues as education, gentrification and immigration, according to an analysis by The Chicago Reporter.

After dozens of interviews, the Reporter found:

• Experts predict a potential void in leadership because many current community leaders are not nurturing enough young Latinos.

• Chicago’s Latinos now make up 26 percent of the city’s population. But many are under age 18 or undocumented and thus not eligible to vote, leaving the Latino community years from fully flexing its political muscle.

• Many Latino leaders now move into politics from business or nonprofit work—in contrast with the 1970s and 1980s, when a wave of progressives emerged from university and community groups.

• The Latino community is more ideologically diverse than ever, and its political leadership now includes more moderate and conservative voices.

“We’re another generation from really feeling our power,” said 12th Ward Alderman Ray Frías. “We’re still a paper tiger compared to what we can be.”

Paper Tiger
From 1990 to 2000, Cook County’s Latino population increased by 54 percent to 1,071,740. And, while Cook still has the largest Hispanic population in the six-county region, Latino populations in DuPage, Lake, Will and Kane counties all more than doubled during the 1990s.

In Chicago, the Hispanic community increased by nearly 28 percent to 753,644, to 26 percent of the city’s population, census data show. More than 70 percent are Mexicans, many living in the South Side neighborhoods of Pilsen, Little Village, Back of the Yards and South Chicago.

Some political gains reflect those numbers.

In 1980, two Latinos held elected office in Chicago, not including judges. Currently, there are 22.

In September, the state’s Legislative Redistricting Commission voted to double the number of predominately Latino legislative districts in the Illinois General Assembly. The plan includes eight districts in the House and four in the Senate, and is expected to face a court challenge before being finalized.

Though Chicago’s Latinos have big numbers, 35 percent of the population is under 18 and therefore ineligible to vote, and about 300,000 other Latinos are undocumented, said Juan Andrade, president of the Chicago-based U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute, an advocacy group which promotes Latino political empowerment.

“Our numbers will translate into votes as our children grow up and as the naturalization process continues,” Andrade said. It won’t take a generation, he said, but “quite honestly it could at least take half that time.”

Even if Latino voting power hasn’t hit its peak, Blagojevich and other gubernatorial candidates told the Reporter they aren’t going to take a chance. Incumbent Republican Gov. George H. Ryan is not seeking re-election, leaving the race wide open heading into the March 19 primaries.

To date, 10 Latino elected officials—including Gutiérrez, Ocasio and Maldonado—have endorsed Blagojevich, whose North Side 5th Congressional District is about 25 percent Hispanic, according to the 2000 census. Few of this year’s gubernatorial candidates have won Latino support as successfully as Blagojevich.

The Democratic hopefuls, including Paul Vallas, the former chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, and Roland W. Burris, former Illinois Attorney General, have no endorsements but are reaching out to Hispanic communities, according to spokeswomen for their campaigns. And on the Republican side, staffers for Lt. Gov. Corrine Wood, state Sen. Patrick O’Malley and Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan all said their candidate’s messages would appeal to Latinos.

And former Illinois State Comptroller Michael Bakalis, a Democrat, acknowledged Hispanics are “very important” but has not yet asked for endorsements. “That’s the old politics,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t like just to do this ethnic politic kind of stuff because my issues are issues for everybody in Illinois.”

No Latino has announced a bid for the governor’s mansion. Gery Chico, president of the Chicago Board of Education from 1995 until last May, said Latinos have a long way to go. “There’s going to have to be some kind of movement, something similar to the one that elected Harold Washington, before you ever see another minority mayor, let alone a Hispanic mayor.” It might take years, he added, but “I frankly don’t want to wait that long.”

History Lesson
William Emilio Rodriguez was elected to the Chicago City Council in 1915. His father was a Mexican immigrant, his mother was from Germany and Rodriguez called himself “a German socialist,” Andrade said.

In the 1950s, businessman Art Velasquez helped organize the Mexican American Democratic Organization of Cook County. The first Latino political organization in Chicago, it acted as a liaison between the city’s small Mexican community and City Hall, according to Velasquez.

“I felt there was a need,” he said. “I thought that if we went to an alderman to get something done for us, they weren’t going to pay attention to us because we had no power.”

But by the 1970s Chicago’s growing Latino population was attracting political attention. Irene C. Hernandez, a precinct captain in the Northwest Side’s 33rd Ward, was elected to the Cook County Board in 1974.

“Even then the Machine was grooming its own Latinos,” said Maria de los Angeles Torres, a political science professor at DePaul University.

In 1981, Mayor Jane M. Byrne appointed Joseph A. Martinez as alderman of the 31st Ward on the Northwest Side.

Redistricting after the 1980 census created the first Latino state legislative district. As a result, in 1982 the Democratic Party slated Joseph Berrios, a 31st Ward precinct captain, and he won a seat in the state house.

Berrios said he came from a poor family in Humboldt Park and saw the regular Democratic organization as his only opportunity to raise money and advance politically.

“People run with the party’s help,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they sell off their morals, or their virtues, or their commitment to their communities.”

State Sen. Miguel del Valle, who, when Berrios was elected, was director of Association House, a Northwest Side social service agency, was angered that Berrios was “a product of the Machine.” So del Valle aligned himself with the Washington movement.


Many like del Valle saw the Democratic Machine as working against the best interest of Latinos.

Mervin Mendez, director of programs with Latinos United, a housing advocacy group, and formerly assistant director with DePaul University’s Center for Latino Research, said “Latinos were generally discouraged from voting” by Democratic precinct workers.

At the same time, in the 1970s and early 1980s, area universities were becoming training grounds for the first group of independent Latino political leaders—first-generation college students who were concerned about community and political issues. Gutiérrez, for example, attended Northeastern Illinois University, where he was active in the Union for Puerto Rican Students and wrote for its newsletter, Que Ondee Sola, or “That which flies alone.”

Delgado, Ocasio, del Valle, current 35th Ward Alderman Vilma Colom and former alderman Miguel A. Santiago were also Northeastern Illinois students. Jesus G. Garcia, a former alderman and state senator, and Alderman Danny Solís, whose 25th Ward includes the Southwest Side Mexican enclave of Pilsen, attended the University of Illinois at Chicago.

There were protests and arrests—Solís was arrested for protesting the university’s admissions policies. Two of those arrested with him were jailed years later on federal charges for trying to overthrow the U.S. government in Puerto Rico as part of the nationalist group Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN).


Many of the former student activists went on to help African Americans elect Harold Washington and, in other city, county and state races, a group of progressive Latinos.

“In the early 1980s, Latinos in the city had been locked out of the political process,” said Nacho Gonzalez, a coordinator with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Neighborhoods Initiative, a partnership between the university and neighborhood organizations. “There was a real anti-Machine sentiment. … Harold sort of captured that and encouraged that.”

Once elected, Washington created the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, an agency that researched and responded to Hispanic community needs, said Torres, one of the commission’s founders and its first executive director. Before they were elected, Gutiérrez, Garcia and del Valle were members of the commission and worked on issues like education and health.


The commission “became like an incubator for future Latino leaders,” said Mendez.

Still, Latinos were never a monolith. Santiago, the only Latino in the City Council at the beginning of the Washington administration, joined with the “Vrdolyak 29,” a coalition of white aldermen allied to block Mayor Washington’s agenda led by Edward R. Vrdolyak, then alderman of the 10th ward.

But it was through the courts that the whole political scene shifted. In 1985, a special election was ordered by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle Sr. as the result of a lawsuit by minority groups challenging the city’s 1980 census redistricting. The elections changed the balance of power in the City Council.

Gutiérrez and Garcia, both aldermanic candidates, and del Valle, vying to be the first Latino in the state senate, were listed on Washington’s “blue ballot,” a list of endorsements handed to voters on their way into the booths, said Jacky Grimshaw, director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under Washington.

“If you weren’t clear about who to vote for, [you would] just look for Harold’s [blue] ballot and it told you who to vote for—that was the difference between a lot of people getting elected and not elected,” Grimshaw said.

In March 1986, all three won; Garcia and Gutiérrez gave Washington supporters a majority in the City Council.

When Washington died in office in 1987, the coalition splintered. Gutiérrez began laying the groundwork for his own congressional run by backing Richard M. Daley’s successful 1989 mayoral campaign. Daley subsequently folded the Latino affairs commission into the Commission on Human Relations.

In 1991, another census and more growth won Hispanics more ground. Miriam Santos, an attorney and protégé of Daley’s, was elected city treasurer in 1991—the first Hispanic to win citywide office. She was re-elected in 1995 and later clashed with Daley.


Illinois also got its first majority-Latino congressional district. The 4th Congressional District zigzags between Chicago's two largest Latino enclaves, Humboldt Park and West Town on the North Side and the Pilsen/Little Village to the South. Gutiérrez won the seat in 1992.

Through the 1990s, as more Latinos were elected to state and city offices, fewer were progressives, experts said.

“Starting with my election what you see on the South Side is that the public has been electing more moderate to conservative candidates,” said Ray Frías, a Daley ally who was elected to the Illinois General Assembly in 1992. “Prior to my election you had more liberal, outspoken, confrontational-type elected officials. Maybe back then, that’s what was called for.”

There were also setbacks for some of the trailblazers. In 1998, Garcia, who had become one of the leading voices in the progressive movement, lost his state senate seat to a Daley-backed challenger, Chicago Police Officer Antonio Muñoz. Santos, seen by many as the best hope for a Latino mayor, ran unsuccessfully in 1998 for Illinois attorney general.

And Santos was indicted for attempted extortion and mail and wire fraud less than four weeks before her election to a third full term as city treasurer in 1999. Her guilty plea in October 2000, and subsequent conviction, marked the “end of her life as a public figure,” she told the Reporter earlier this year.

Machine Politics
With time comes evolution. Take Danny Solís.

He helped found the nonprofit United Neighborhood Organization and in 1986 became its executive director. Through most of the 1980s the organization was known for taking on City Hall over issues such as education, housing and health in Latino areas.

But Solís turned political, endorsing and campaigning for candidates, and, after Daley was elected mayor in 1989, sided with City Hall on an increasing number of development issues. In 1996, Daley appointed Solís 25th Ward alderman after Ambrosio Medrano pleaded guilty to taking bribes in Operation Silver Shovel, the nine-year federal investigation into public corruption. This August the City Council, at Daley’s suggestion, elected Solís its president pro tempore.

That month, Solís, dressed in a white guayabera shirt, stood in the Crystal Gardens hall on Navy Pier at his $200-a-head campaign fundraiser. It looked like the receiving line at a big Catholic wedding. Some of the city’s most influential politicians, including Richard Mell, alderman of the 33rd Ward and chairman of the council’s redistricting committee, lined up to take pictures with Solís.

The former outsider and neighborhood activist is now considered an insider. And Solís doesn’t reject the label. He said he can accomplish more for his community as a Daley ally.

“I don’t believe that I’ve sold out my philosophy of what I’d like to do for my community just because I am part of the Machine,” Solís said. “More has been done in five years than was done in 20 years previous to me coming in, and that’s because I have power.”

Others lament what they describe as a loss of Latino independence. Torres said that, besides Solís, most aldermen loyal to Daley are “not Latinos that have a grass-roots trajectory. [They’re] beholden to him, not to the community.”

“Half of the guys leading gentrification of Latino communities are Latino politicians,” added Gonzalez of the Neighborhoods Initiative.

But Andrade said the independent movement is in resurgence. He cited the 2000 election of Cynthia Soto, a Mexican American who beat incumbent Edgar López, a Puerto Rican, in the state’s heavily Puerto Rican 4th Representative District. Soto won with backing from Latino independents, including del Valle and Gutiérrez.


Still, many political insiders and observers wonder if the current leadership has groomed enough young Latinos for the political openings created by population growth.

“There’s a void in who I see involved in the community,” said Sylvia Puente, a project director at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. “There are young people and the 40-plus crowd; I don’t see any in-between people.”

Frías said he grooms up-and-coming leaders by employing them in his political organization and supporting them for elective office. He cited the examples of Susana Mendoza and Gloria Camarena, his assistant. Mendoza was Frías’ press secretary in the 1990s, and was elected to the state House in 2000. Frías is backing Camarena’s bid against Cook County Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno next year.

Fresh Faces
Some new Latino leaders are more interested in community work than politics.

On a balmy July day that felt more like summer in Old San Juan than in Chicago, a Puerto Rican teenage girl in a flower print dress walked into the storefront office at 2647 W. Division St.


She was looking for a job, and the man inside, Enrique “Ricky” Salgado Jr., began explaining AmeriCorps’ VISTA program, a federally funded effort placing young adults with organizations that fight poverty.

Salgado asked if she were going to college. The girl seemed uncertain. “Working with us is contingent on you going to school,” said Salgado, executive director of the Division Street Business Development Association, which attracts investment to the area.


Salgado, 24, began volunteering with the association three years ago. He is finishing a degree in business administration and inner city studies at Northeastern Illinois University and, like Puerto Rican leaders who attended the school before him, is active in the Union for Puerto Rican Students. He grew up in Bucktown on the Northwest Side.

“Its work is the development, and marketing and maintenance, of Paseo Boricua,” Salgado said of the association. The “Paseo Boricua” is a stretch of West Division Street between Western and California avenues. “Paseo Boricua is the anchor of the Puerto Rican community, economically, politically and socially,” Salgado said. “The way to stabilize the Puerto Rican community is to stabilize it economically.”

Salgado said many Puerto Ricans leave Humboldt Park after going to college and becoming professionals. He’d like to see more stick around and get involved. “There’s not enough people from the community looking out for the community,” he said. “I hold myself accountable. What is my generation going to leave for my daughter?”

Still, Salgado would never consider elective office: “Why do people keep asking me that?”

Many Latino organizations have cultivated political networks.


Groups like UNO, the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association (HACIA), which works to increase Latino construction contracts, have forged alliances with City Hall. Last summer the chamber’s second chief executive officer, Juan Ochoa, co-founded a political action committee, the Illinois Business PAC, to support elected officials, especially Latinos who are pro-business.

“Our focus is trying to open as many doors as we can for our membership and all Hispanic businesses,” said Ochoa.
In 1999, Daley tapped the construction association’s former president, Miguel d'Escoto, to be his deputy chief of staff. Last year, Daley named him commissioner of the city's Department of Transportation.

D’Escoto “understands how the system works,” said Frías. He’s “someone you can turn to and say, ‘There’s a rising star.’”

D’Escoto has a political pedigree. His uncle, the Rev. Miguel d’Escoto, was a foreign minister in the Sandinista government of former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

At HACIA, d’Escoto advocated for Latinos to be part of city and state government as well as get a piece of government contracts. Still, he said, “I was surprised when the offer came. I felt very flattered and fortunate.”

D’Escoto said he has “absolutely no interest” in running for office himself. “What motivates me is the ability to work for a great boss,” he said.

Other Latinos believe they’re ready to step up.

The jingle/jangle of “A Hard Days Night” blasted as people danced one evening in July at the Hot House, a South Loop club, at a political fundraiser for Marty Castro. He is a candidate for the 4th District congressional seat.

Some considered Castro, a partner with the law firm of Castro, Gomez, Durbin & De Jesús, an up-and-coming Latino leader even before he announced in April that he would run against Gutiérrez, a five-term incumbent. Although Castro has never run for office, he has raised funds for U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and former Vice President Al Gore. And his father, Raymond, was once the Democratic committeeman of the 7th Ward on the far South Side and a failed candidate for alderman in 1983.

But del Valle said new leadership needs to begin at the grass roots level through education. He points to the example of the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Alternative High School in Bucktown, where “kids go to school but they also come up with … a conciencia (conscience) and a sense of community.

“If some of them go into politics, we certainly want some of them to do that,” he said. “But we should be concerned about having enough young people moving into leadership positions to head up agencies in our community and to develop programs in our community.”

Contributing: Ellyn M. Ong, Vince Kong, Concethia Campbell and Kimiyo Naka. Cyril Mychalejko and Tarshel Beards helped research this article.