Realidades; “Your Vote is Powerful”; Su Voto Es Poderoso

Bienvenidos a nuestro programa Realidades. Mucha gente no entiende en la ley de derechos de votante. Hoy vamos a discutir cómo esa ley afecta a la comunidad latina en los Estados Unidos y qué debemos hacer para desarrollar nuestra participación y poder en el sistema político de este país. Como acostumbramos en realidades, hablamos en español o en inglés, según prefieran nuestros compañeros. Este programa es netamente bilingue. Se encuentra con nosotros el licenciado Alpérez, director del Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund en Washington, D.C., la señora Raquel Crateff, directora de gelaciones con la comunidad del gobierno de Puerto Rico en Nueva York, y al licenciado Jack John Olivero, presidente de la Junta de directores de Puerto Rico, Legal Defense Fund. También está con nosotros en el estudio en Washington, D.C., el congresista, el mam vadillo.

¿Cómo estás? Muy bien, muy bien, gracias. Es un poquito más caliente aquí que en Nueva York. Me alegro. Siento muchísimo que el congresista Roy Ball no puede estar con nosotros hoy, pero así son las cosas, ¿no? Bueno, estamos en sesión en Washington, así es que ese es el problema. Bien, congresista Abadillo, ¿puedes decirnos un poquito sobre las orígenes del acto de derechos de votantes? Sí, el acto de derechos de votantes había sido aprobado originalmente por el Congreso en el año 1965, pero eso era principalmente para proteger los derechos de votar de los negros americanos, y por eso incluía principalmente a los estados del sur. Cuando yo vine al Congreso en el 71, decidí que era importante incluir también a los ispanos, principalmente los Puerto Ricanos de Nueva York y los mexicanos en Texas, Arizona, California

y Nuevo México. La oportunidad de hacer el cambio vino en el año 1975, cuando yo me cambié al comité judicial y fui, logré estar en el comité que tiene que ver con esos cambios, así es que allí pude empujar las enmiendas del año 1975, cosa desde ese año, desde agosto 675, están incluido bajo los derechos de votación, no solamente los negros americanos, sino los ispanos, los indios americanos y los que viven en Alaska, pero más importante para nosotros es que por primera vez testos 75 se incluyen específicamente los ispanos de este país bajo los derechos de votar. Herman, ¿cuáles son las medidas más importantes de esta ley? Lo más importante es que en toda área donde hay más de 5% de ispanos, la papeleta se

tiene que preparar en español y en inglés, cosa de que si hay enmiendas complicadas, la gente pueda entender de qué se tratan, en el segundo lugar se exige de que cualquier cambio local en las lecciones, en la ley de lecciones, sea aprobado por el gobierno federal, porque lo que pasa con nuestra comunidad es que según van cambiando los vecindarios, por ejemplo en Texas, y la mayoría empieza a convertirse en una mayoría mexicana, entonces cambian las leyes, cosa de la mayoría no pueda conseguir a sus propios oficiales, eso ya no se puede hacer. Herman, ¿cuáles son los específicos de participación en el desarrollo de los actos en el Congreso de Marói Balz?

Well, I was the sole Hispanic, who was a member of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. I went to the Judiciary Committee in 1975, in order that I could participate in amending the Voting Rights Act of 1975, so as to include the Hispanic community, and the reason I did that is because I found that throughout the country, the Hispanic community had a much lower literacy rate than the rest of the country, and for that reason we amended the Voting Rights Act to provide for a bilingual ballot, and that doesn't mean that the community should not learn how to speak the language, but it does mean that any state, which does not want to be subject to the Voting Rights Act, has a responsibility to see to it that the community gets a proper education, because if the education of the community is at the same level as the national literacy rate, then the Voting Rights Act no longer applies. But the reality is that in many states, in the southwest particularly, there is no serious effort to bring up the educational level of the Hispanic community, and that is the reason

why the Act applies. Now, Congressman Roybal worked with me in the testimony as did the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, because I was the sole member of the subcommittee, but we needed to document the case, to bring out clearly to the rest of the Congress, that the reason why there was a lower participation of Hispanics in the political process in this country is not because they didn't want to participate, because obstacles had been placed in their participation, and the Voting Rights Act was necessary to begin to remove those obstacles. Thank you, Herman. We're going to take a look at a map here. Las áreas en Nicarla, en Verde, fueron cubiertas en la Ley original del 1965, las enmiendas del 1960, se ven en amarillo, y las áreas anaranjadas fueron las últimas agregadas en el 1975.

Una pregunta para Jack John. How did the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund participate in the development of this act? In several ways, the fund nailed down the rights, the Voting Rights for Puerto Ricans through a number of cases, and Lopez V Dinkins in New York State, Torres V Sacs, which dealt with those two cases, dealt with special elections for school board elections, and the whole range of voting rights, such as registration, bilingual materials, interpreters, change of addresses, a couple of cases in New Jersey, in four major counties, in the case in Philadelphia, a Royal V Tucker continued to expand those rights, and then in an administrative way, the secretaries of state of both Massachusetts and Connecticut voluntarily covered made provision for the Hispanic within those communities.

At the invitation of Congressman Badea, we appeared before the Judiciary Committee and testified on the 75 amendments, and I think that the Torres V Sacs case, the essence of that case, was kind of incorporated in the law that way. And Al, how about the Maldives? What was their participation? Yes. Essentially, we kind of picked up on what the Puerto Rican Legal Defense had done in conceptualizing a scheme whereby the act could be amended to include coverage of Hispanics. To that end, we did a fairly extensive analysis of the legal cases which had been litigated by different Hispanic groups, including the Puerto Ricans in New England, and an extensive analysis of the factual problems that Mexican-Americans were experiencing in Texas, where we even sent people out to Texas to examine the voting practices at different jurisdictions and how the Chicano community was being discriminated by the local authorities.

And then, again, at the invitation of the appropriate committees in Congress, we testified to present a testimony about these legal and factual problems we were having, and we were able to persuade Congress that the problems were so egregious as to demand or compel Congress to pass these amendments. Well, maybe you could tell us a little about Texas. How is it that the entire state of Texas is covered by the act, and in other states, or at least through some of the amendments of the act, other states are only sections of the state are covered? How does that work? First of all, you have to understand the two, go back to the two major elements of the act that Congressman Badeo referred to earlier. One, the most important one for us, is the one that requires Texas or any coverage restriction to pre-clear all his election changes through the U.S. Attorney General. That's one aspect of the Boarding Rights Act.

The other aspect deals with providing bilingual election assistance to Hispanics in the covered areas. Now you have two triggering devices, one covering the pre-clearance and one covering the bilingual election provisions. You know, Texas is covered in its entirety only under section four, which is the triggering device dealing with pre-clearance. And along those lines, the act provides for a triggering, for triggering coverage in Texas. This happens to fit the formula, and it wasn't by accident that we set out essentially two cover Texas entirely under section five of the act. Uh-huh. It's, uh, Herman, do you want to add something to that? Yes. I think people should know that it's easy now to talk about the act having been enacted, but I must tell you that at the beginning, it was seen as a very long shot that this would ever come into being because the ranking person next to Rodino in the Judiciary Committee was representative Jack Brooks from Texas.

And when I got to the committee, he said, look, fellow, I want you to understand that when Lyndon Johnson was president of the United States, he could not include Texas in the Voting Rights Act. He said, I know you're coming to this committee because you want to include Texas, and I'm telling you, you're not going to do it. So I said, all I want to do is to try, that's all. And, uh, we had very difficult opposition to get it done. But when we took the vote in the committee, and the vote carried, uh, represent the Brooks agreed to vote for the act because he said that we had beaten him fair and square. But, uh, getting Texas included in his entirety was one of the major victories of the past a few years as far as the Spanish community is concerned. Herman, did, uh, did, uh, did Mr. Brooks, in fact, vote with you? Yes, he did. He promised me. He said he was going to, he was going to oppose me down to the end. But if I beat him on the committee, he would vote for me on the floor. And when we took the vote on the committee, he was astonished because he never lost the vote on the committee.

Don't forget the ranking member next to Rodino, uh, carries a lot of power. However, when he found that he had lost, he kept his word and on the floor of the house, he voted for the, uh, Voting Rights Act. That's, that's great. That's great. Okay. In a theory. � Back to the que prohibía, o mejor dicho, no quitaba nosotros el derecho a votar, porque había muchísimas personas que podían presentar certificados, pero no hasta sexto grado y que sabían leer y escribir español y podían votar. Entonces, la enmienda es 75, incluidos nosotros, para que los materiales sean todos bilíngue,

pues, nos ayuda tremendamente a la participación que tenemos derecho. Mm-hmm. Within the act, there seems to be a procedure called bailout. Al, you want to talk to bailout in particular how it affected New Mexico? Yes, just like you have two formulas for imposing coverage, you also have two formulas for getting out of coverage and getting out means bailing out. And so, in the case of New Mexico, they had originally opposed to being included in the 1975 amendments. Having failed at that, as soon as the coverage was imposed after the bill became law, they filed a lawsuit wherein they were trying to get out or bailout from the coverage of the Boarding Rights Act dealing with the preclearance provisions and they were successfully persuading the district court that they sort of met the criteria in the act for bailing out. And so, they have successfully bailed out from the preclearance provisions

of the Boarding Rights Act, but they still have not bailout from the bilingual election provisions. Does that mean that election materials and information is still available in Spanish to Spanish speakers if they need it? It means that they must provide bilingual election materials. Bien, entonces, no hay tanto problema. Herman, do you know of any other states that might have bailed out or used that provision at all? Well, I would hope that all the states would want to bail out and would take advantage of the incentive that we put into the act to educate the people so that they have the same literacy rate as the others. We would rather have one standard throughout the nation, but unfortunately, it's up to the individual states to rise to that standard. I don't know of any state that has sought to have a crash program to improve a literacy. I can tell you that if any state does, we in Congress would be willing to provide additional funds to be sure that that program is successful. In other words, if a state or a jurisdiction brings itself to a position

where there is no literacy or a sufficient number of people who are English speakers and can deal with the election law or that they provide enough material in any language minority, people would then have the vote available to them and there wouldn't be any need for this act. Is that correct? Well, it's only for the bilingual election provisions. The Chicano community has always seen the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act as much more important to us generally than the bilingual elections. They're both important. But to us, the preclearance provides a better remedy as far as the kinds of discrimination we were facing in Texas. You mentioned, for example, gerrymandering, annexations, we destructing all these problems will not be taken care of by bilingual election provisions. You'd need preclearance provisions for those. I see. Speaking of Texas, we've got a little film about Texas. You already know that Texas is the largest jurisdiction that we have under the law of the Rights of the Voting Rights Act

and it contains a great number of minority groups. But the four thousand, seven hundred and seventy functionaries of them are only two hundred and ninety-eight are Chicans. And there's only one black Alcalde and in the metropolitan areas and two state senators are Chicans. There's never seen any minority women serving in the court or in the state's criminal appeal. Let's see a film and this film teaches the efforts of the Chicans to remedy this situation. The law of Pecos is a reference that has given this people fame. It's an example of the injustice to the rights of the Chicans population. Even though the Chicans have 54% of the population in Pecos, the power is in hands of the minority of Anglosajona.

There's a new awareness of politics in the youth of the southwest, as well as the people of Pecos. Since 1971, leaders of the community like Frank Perea have been carrying out workshops to write and educate the residents of Pecos on their rights to vote and the importance of the political process. By qualifying for the City of Pecos in 18 years, that we consist of 53.2% of the population. The residents have 334 of the 52% of the population.

And then the Anglos have 4550 for the 4.3.5% ratio. The interesting thing about this is that even though we have more people in the population and we also have more people who live in this population, we don't have as much as the American government to vote, as we have. The 4550 of the people who live in this population, they have 93,980 of the people who vote. Frank, is it mandatory that you need the phone number and the social security number on the registration certificate? The tarjeta will not be found in patients, in case you exclude these two parts of the tarjeta. Did you all decide to get our names and get the dates, the first dates, but at the third system,

it is very difficult to get them. The last year, more than 3,300 Chicanos were inscribed. This made it possible for the first time in history of the people, the selection of a Chicano sheriff and the second member of the municipal council.

This year, it is estimated that 1,800 Chicanos will be inscribed. Their votes would be able to achieve the majority within the municipal council and the group of education. Thus, Pecos would be transformed politically as the city of crystal in 1972. The education project and the subscription of voters of the southwest tries to increase the political participation of the Latin American Chicanos in more than 50 communities. 150,000 voters have been inscribed in the last two years and an inscription of 200,000 this year was made. The simple act of voter inscriptions would result in possible if it were not for the law of voters. Without this law, both the ancients, such as the people whose mother tongue is not English, would not be inscribed in voter inscriptions. If it is said that the political power in this country

resides in the local community, if this is true, the effort of the Chicano Pecos to be incorporated in the political process would already have to be carried out. Our youth is in the future. The way that they are prepared today to solve the problems of the community will end the solution of those problems in the morning. We just want to keep on being more concerned and during Saturdays, Saturdays, Saturdays, Saturdays, Saturdays, Saturdays, Saturdays, Saturdays, to get people out of the way so that they can register. And here I will answer again to make sure that there is a little of salsa. Maruta! Maruta! Maruta!

Maruta! Jack, we see a film about voter registration but that's not all of the answer to the problem. People have to get out to vote. What would you suggest in that regard? One is organization. People have to organize. They have to realize that not exercising that right to vote will not impact in a political way and the people who affect their lives on a day-to-day basis. What is disconcerting to me is that in Puerto Rico, as you know, people discuss political questions. It's hot, it's heavy, it rages, people vote. The exercise rights to vote. Over 80% people vote regularly. Those are entitled to vote. When you come to the United States, it's depressingly different. It's terribly disconcerting.

And one has to realize that there are devices, a ways to preclude or to minimize or discourage those individuals from voting. Nonetheless, a massive effort has to be taken. Voter registration, as Raquel has been involved in, a community organization and a realization that through political action, one could have a major effect on the lives of people on a day-to-day basis. Herman would be a key example of that kind of success. This is very good with Jack. And one of the things that worries us is the little participation of young people. Now that they have rights for 18 years, they have to have a movement with which these young people can identify and identify with something that promises them what they have not yet found in these movements. For example, the law is very complicated.

Very few people know it. There are still people who have a degree of education if you don't ask them what the law means. They are saying that they don't know what they are talking about. And then there are certain jobs that, even though the law indicates clearly that you have the right to vote that you can't see certain difficulties that you can easily process yourself. You can't. It's quite difficult. The organization, the identification, with something that means that there is a power that can be used. Herman, you got anything to add to that? Washington? Yes, but I'm going to say in Spanish. I think you should know now that this force of achieving the right to vote has taken it for many years from before 1965, then in the 1970s and then in the 1975s.

The reason why we have been in that force is because it's important, because here in this country a powerful country the politicians decide what will happen in terms of a community in terms of living, education and employment. And there are many that don't want to see that our community assumes power and that they know that if we subscribe and vote we can assume that power. That's why the parties in the Congress have been so difficult, and that's why it's important that the victories in the Congress result in victories in the commissions and that remains with you. I hope that everyone who is listening will appreciate the importance of participating in the political process of this country. There are many written materials about the law of the right to vote. If you are interested, look for more of these directions.

Voting Section, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, D.C., DOZ-04, DOZ-5, and Maldive, the S28 of Connecticut Avenue, Northwest, Switzerland, D.C.C., Washington, D.C., DOZ-0036. We have reached the end of this program. Thank you very much to all of you and to the Congresswoman in Mambadillo to the License of Alperes, to the Crate Off, and the License of Jack John Olivero. Thank you very much for being with us tonight with realties and to our community and to our community to leave you with this message. We are going to write to all of you to vote for our power in the political system of this country. Adios. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for being with us today.