Horizonte Journalists’ Roundtable: Year in Review

Horizonte’s Journalists’ Roundtable review the year’s new cycle and how it affected the hispanic community. Joining Horizonte host Jose Cardenas was Martha Mauer of KTAR, Richard Ruelas of The Arizona Republic and Al Macias of KJZZ.

This year’s Horizonte Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Elections 2020: Latino Vote
• Social justice movement
• Biden administration and communities of color
• Coronavirus impact on communities of color
• DACA reinstated
• Proposition 207: Legalization of recreational marijuana
• Proposition 208: Invest in Education Act

Latino vote in Elections 2020

Mauer: “If you ask the Biden campaign, it was very significant. According to them, the Latino vote was critical in winning the state of Arizona. A feat that many did not think was possible for Arizona’s votes to go to a Joe Biden, a Democrat instead of Republican Donald Trump, who won the state four years ago. You could really see the way grassroots groups in Arizona wasted no time in following the 2016 election to mobilize the group of Latinos who came of age in 2020 and were able to cast their vote for the first time.”

Macias: “Latinos in Arizona are different from Latinos in Texas and different from Latinos in Florida. Latinos in Florida, obviously, there’s a huge population of Cuban Americans, Venezuelan immigrants, Nicaraguan immigrants. The Trump campaign played to the fears and concerns of those communities with the backgrounds of dictatorships and undemocratic governments. The Trump campaign taped into that fear in Florida and it helped.”

Ruelas: “There was some concern that Latino males would be breaking towards Trump but there was worry early in the Biden campaign that he didn’t really start up his Latino outreach effort; that came late. We say a heavy buy of Spanish language ads in states like Arizona and Texas. A lot of Latino activists will tell you this was a long time coming based on activism after SB1070 was passed.”

Police brutality and Black Lives Matter

Mauer: “Coronavirus and the pandemic took center stage but within this year, we definitely saw a big movement, in my opinion, that we haven’t seen in Arizona in many years. It sparked out of outrage that was felt across the nation, fueled by an environment, whether it was caused by the President, a lack of action or simply just being overdo, we saw protests for I think 18 days in a row in Downtown Phoenix last summer. We did see some civil unrest, some rioting but overall peaceful protestors, who were there day in and day out wanting to show solidarity in those high profile killings in other states and stand behind some people of color in Arizona by many accounts have been treated badly by police.”

Ruelas: “In Phoenix, we did see some effects of those protests. For a while, Phoenix started to have a police reform committee. The future of that is still up in the air but we have seen some changes on the ground policy wise because of these social justice protests in the streets.”

Macias: “If you’re going to drive a message, you want to have a clear message. I think ‘Defund the Police‘ leaves room for misunderstanding.”