Rodolfo F.
Acuña
With all of the hype around Latinos these days, how
could Arizona have happened? I thought we had power. One-third of Arizona is
Latino and its neighbor California is the land of milk and honey – the favorite
destination of politicos of all colors. Over fifty percent of Los Angeles is
Latino; its mayor is Mexican American as is the mayor of San Antonio, Texas.
Arizona’s war on Mexican Americans does not make
sense, especially in the light of the growth of the Latino population that now
numbers 50 million. This nightmare seems out of place. Alabama maybe, but
Arizona?
It is time that we try to find answers and admit our
weaknesses. The most obvious flaw is that Arizona has exposed a weakness in
Latino and Mexican American organizational infrastructure.
A partial answer as to why Latinos are so
ineffective is that the Latino population is having growing pains. It has grown
dramatically in the past fifty years, going from a regional to a national
phenomenon. This transformation has out stripped the capacity of traditional
organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the
American GI Forum to deal with this change.
Presently there are only two organizations that
could be called national and they came about in 1968 with the founding of the
Southwest Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund.
