A handful of people trickled into the Las Vegas office of Latino advocacy group Make the Road Nevada on Tuesday night for a listening session on the 2024 election moderated by Radio Ambulante, NPR’s sole Spanish-language podcast.
Colored pencils and papers were spread across the tables to doodle as participants listened to one of the series’ latest episodes on the Latino vote and discussed how those issues connected to their own lives.
“Latinos need to vote and decide how we would like to be represented,” Etelvina Zamora-Esquivel, a 60-year-old phone banker for the progressive group said in reaction to the episode.
For more than an hour, Zamora-Esquivel and the six other participants at the event moderated by Radio Ambulante’s Head of Communities Juan David Naranjo Navarro expressed wide-ranging grievances with the current state of affairs, from rising xenophobia to the economy and rising housing costs. While they expressed dissatisfaction with both parties, they demonstrated begrudging acceptance of Democrats, contending that they were less belligerent than anti-immigrant GOP candidates such as former President Donald Trump, who has promised to launch a mass deportation campaign if elected.
Another factor that could help better Latinos’ political position, they argued: participation in local politics, from voting to getting elected themselves and just generally staying informed.
The event was a much less formal affair than Vice President Kamala Harris’ Univision town hall in Las Vegas two weeks ago, which had more than 75 attendees. Organizers for Radio Ambulante — who have hosted similar events in other swing states — said that they hoped that a smaller event would create a more comfortable, intimate setting for participants to share their thoughts about the contentious election.
“[The listening clubs] are safe spaces, spaces where we accept differences, accept diversity and the life experiences of others,” Naranjo Navarro told the Nevada Independent.
Begrudging acceptance of Democrats
Kenia Morales, 37, has come to favor Democrats, despite identifying as a nonpartisan and having a vocal distrust of the political establishment.
“At the end of the day, I believe that if I am to have a conversation with a Democratic leader, it will help me more than with a Republican,” Morales said during the listening group.
Like other Nevadans, the pandemic took an especially heavy economic toll on Morales. Her husband and brother lost their jobs. Meanwhile, her father’s photography business shriveled up, leading to a foreclosure on his house, leaving Morales — a self-employed political strategist who has led national campaigns — as the family’s sole breadwinner.
“I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to pay all these bills?’” Morales said.
Despite Morales’ economic struggles, she still believes that Democrats are the best pick this election, in part because she feels that the GOP has espoused anti-immigrant beliefs — to the point where she’s felt physically unsafe. She warned others, however, to remain politically active to ensure that elected representatives remained attuned to the community’s needs.
Morales is not the sole Nevada Latino who has become disheartened with political institutions. Although the group comprises about 20 percent of Nevada’s registered voters, nearly half identify as nonpartisans, according to an analysis from NALEO Education Fund, a Latino political group.
Although Harris is currently outperforming Trump among Latinos, recent polling shows that she is struggling to consolidate the same amount of support as President Joe Biden did with the group in 2020. To win Nevada, upping her support from the group may prove key.
More Latinos needed in politics
Yajaira Rimendes, a 34-year-old phone banker, has come to resent establishment political leaders who she says “don’t do anything to help Latinos.” After being diagnosed with cancer, Rimendes was briefly left jobless and even was homeless, and she says she was only able to get back on her feet with help from community organizations such as Make the Road.
“That’s why us Latinos are suffering now — because there are no representatives that support us,” Rimendes said.
For Rimendes, who is originally from Puerto Rico, some of the discrimination she has experienced feels somewhat two-fold. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, she says no politicians stepped in to help. And despite being from a U.S. territory, she’s frequently been told to “go back to her country” — something many others in the listening group reported experiencing.
Although Nevada’s Latino population has grown, its level of representation in elected office has lagged behind, an Indy analysis found, despite bright spots such as the election of the nation’s first Latina Senator, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV.) In 2021, new redistricting boundaries divided the Latino population across the state’s four districts, diluting the voting bloc’s power even more.
But Leo Murrieta, the 38-year-old director of Make the Road Nevada, contends that upping Latino political representation isn’t enough. Pointing to the growing number of Latino voters and politicians who favor more stringent anti-immigration measures, he said the group also needs representatives — irrespective of race or ethnicity — who espouse Latinos’ best interests.
“We need leadership, but we don’t necessarily need politicians. We need people. We need tables like this with regular people who care about things,” Murrieta said.
