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History > 2008 > USA > Hispanics (I)

A Killing in a Town

Where Latinos Sense Hate

November 14, 2008
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

PATCHOGUE, N.Y. — It was an occasional diversion among a certain crowd at Patchogue-Medford High School, students said: Drink a few beers, then go looking for people to mug, whether for money or just for kicks.

Friends of Jeffrey Conroy, a star athlete at the school, say he was known to do it, too. And last Saturday night, after drinking in a park in the Long Island hamlet of Medford, Mr. Conroy, 17, and six other teenagers declared that they were going to attack “a Mexican” and headed to the more ethnically diverse village of Patchogue to hunt, according to friends and the authorities.

They found their target in Marcelo Lucero, a serious-minded, 37-year-old immigrant from a poor village in Ecuador who had lived in the United States for 16 years, mostly in Patchogue, and worked in a dry cleaning store, sending savings home to support his mother, a cancer survivor.

After the boys surrounded, taunted and punched Mr. Lucero, the authorities say, Mr. Conroy plunged a knife into his victim’s chest, fatally wounding him.

The attack has horrified and puzzled many in this comfortable Suffolk County village of 11,700. Prosecutors have labeled it a hate crime and County Executive Steve Levy called the defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, “white supremacists.” And some immigrant advocates on Long Island have described the attack as a reflection of widespread anti-Latino sentiment and racial intolerance in Suffolk County.

Interviews with business owners, students, government officials and immigrants in the area suggest that illegal immigration has been a wellspring for anger and tension in the neighborhood, with day laborers drawing the greatest fire. Indeed, a number of people — adults and students alike — drew sharp distinctions between assimilated immigrants, who they said should be welcomed as friends and neighbors, and newly arrived illegal immigrants, who they said do not belong.

“No disrespect here, but I’m a firm believer that if you want to come to this country, you should have a job waiting for you,” said the co-owner of the Medford Shooting Range, who gave only his first name, Charlie, and is known by the nickname Charlie Range.

He said he was offended by the behavior of some day laborers — throwing trash in the street, urinating in the bushes, hooting at passing women — and complained that illegal immigrants were crowding rental apartments and swelling the ranks of criminal gangs.

“How do you stop the illegal alien influx?” he wondered aloud. “How do you stop the rain?”

Thousands of immigrants from Latin America have flowed into Long Island in the past two decades, attracted by employment opportunities, particularly in the construction industry, which until recently was booming. Patchogue’s Latino population has risen sharply during this time, village officials say, with Ecuadoreans now being the single largest Latino group.

According to the 2000 census, Latinos were 24 percent of Patchogue’s population, up from 14 percent in 1990, and government officials say the percentage has continued to grow. In just the past five years, the Latino student population of the Patchogue-Medford School District has risen to 24 percent from about 4 percent, said Michael H. Mostow, the district’s superintendent.

Anti-immigrant hostility has led to several highly publicized attacks in recent years in Suffolk County, including the near-death beating of two Mexican day laborers in 2001 and the burning of a Mexican family’s house in 2003, both in the nearby town of Farmingville.

Immigrant advocates have accused some local politicians, particularly Mr. Levy, of helping to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment by promoting tough policies against illegal immigration. But Mr. Levy said this week that the attack on Mr. Lucero “wasn’t a question of any county policy or legislation; it was a question of bad people doing horrific things.”

For all the parsing of motives and rationales in the case, many Latino immigrants here describe Suffolk County as a place where daily life can be a struggle for acceptance in a predominantly white population, particularly in this time of economic crisis. Rocio Ponce, a Brentwood resident and real-estate agent from Ecuador, said that many residents had developed a hatred against recent Latino immigrants “because they think they’re coming to take their jobs.”

Latinos say the attack against Mr. Lucero, if not his murder, was foretold. Some report being threatened and physically harassed in the streets, with bottles thrown at them and their car windows smashed during the night. Anti-immigrant epithets and racially motivated bullying are common in the hallways of the schools, children say.

“They tell us to go get a green card, ‘Go back to your community!’ ” said Pamela Guncay, 14, an Ecuadorean-American born in the United States.

Many Latinos, particularly those who are here illegally, say they would never report such incidents because they do not trust the police and fear deportation.

“We’re here to work, we’re not here to do any damage,” pleaded César Angamarca, 45, who rents a room in a small house where Mr. Lucero lived. “We’re working honorably.”

Friends of Mr. Conroy and the other suspects insisted that the defendants were not racist and said they were shocked that a frivolous escapade by bored, drunken teenagers had quickly turned tragic. They pointed out that one of the defendants, José Pacheco, 17, is the son of an African-American mother and a Puerto Rican father, and that Mr. Conroy counted Latino and black classmates among his closest buddies.

“They were good kids,” said Sean Ruga, 19, who graduated from the high school in 2006 and remained friends with the defendants. “It’s not something I could see them capable of doing.”

Mr. Pacheco’s uncle, Jerry Dumas, said his nephew was with the group because he was looking for a ride home and would not have knowingly joined an attack against a Latino, especially considering his ethnic heritage. He also said that Mr. Pacheco’s parents had themselves been apparent victims of violent racism: When they moved into the Patchogue area in the early 1990s, Mr. Dumas said, their house was burned down twice.

Mr. Conroy was the best known of the defendants and, according to prosecutors, the leader of the group. He was on the school’s lacrosse and wrestling teams, according to his friends, who said he had a lacrosse scholarship to attend the University of Maryland next year. He also coached younger athletes, friends said.

Jeffrey Francis, 18, who is black, said Mr. Conroy befriended him soon after he transferred into the school this fall. They were on the wrestling team together, he said.

Acquaintances of the defendants said it was not unusual for groups of students from the high school to go out looking for people to mug. “It was just for fun, or for money,” said Taylor Fallica, 15, a student at the high school who said he was a friend of Mr. Conroy and the other defendants.

A friend who said he had been hanging out with the seven defendants in the park that night said there had not been much in the way of a plan before the group set out.

“We were just chilling, having a few beers,” said the friend, who requested anonymity because he had also been interviewed by the police and feared making contradictory statements.

Toward midnight, he recalled, “they said they were going to go jump a Mexican,” and they left.

Mr. Lucero had come to the United States to help support his family in Gualaceo, Ecuador, said his brother, Joselo, 34, in an interview this week in Patchogue, where he lives. Their father had died when they were young and Marcelo assumed the role of father figure in the family, Joselo said.

Marcelo Lucero was a hard worker and had little social life, according to his brother and a resident in a house where he rented a room. When Joselo joined Marcelo in Patchogue in the mid-1990s, the older brother frequently counseled him on how to take care of himself and be safe.

“He was a like a protector,” Joselo recalled. “He told me: ‘You have to be a man here. There’s no mom here anymore.’ ”

As the mob descended, Mr. Lucero’s friend managed to escape and contact the police, who rounded up the suspects minutes later.

Mr. Conroy was charged with first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and first-degree gang assault; the others were charged with first-degree gang assault. They were arraigned on Monday and the case was sent to a grand jury, which began reviewing evidence on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

Joselo Lucero said his priorities were now to get his brother’s body back to Ecuador for burial and to ensure that justice was served. But he said he felt no bitterness or vengefulness toward his brother’s attackers.

“I don’t really feel hate,” he said.

“I feel sorry for the families, in some way, because they have to be responsible for their kids.”

Since Mr. Lucero’s death, local officials have almost universally played down any suggestion that ethnic and racial tension had been prevalent in the community. Nonetheless, local, county and state officials have responded to the killing with various plans, including the introduction of sensitivity task forces, outreach programs in the Latino community and community forums.

“It is imperative that we bridge the divide,” Patchogue’s mayor, Paul V. Pontieri Jr., said on Thursday, “and realize that the things we have in common far outnumber those that divide us.”

Angela Macropolis contributed reporting from Medford, N.Y.

A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate, NYT, 14.11.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/nyregion/14immigrant.html

Hispanics, Young Voters,

Women Help Obama Win

November 5, 2008
Filed at 5:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Barack Obama drew on support from Hispanics, young voters and women to score victories in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado -- three Western states that voted for President Bush in 2004.

Obama also contributed to an Election Day sweep in New Mexico that put the state's entire congressional delegation in Democratic hands for the first time in 40 years.

According to exit polling conducted for The Associated Press, Obama performed better among New Mexico Hispanics than John Kerry did four years ago when he narrowly lost the state to President Bush.

''We don't need another Bush in there,'' said John Marquez, 44, an Albuquerque Democrat who supported Obama. ''We need to get the Republicans out. They're driving us under. We've got to put the country back in order.''

About seven in 10 Hispanics in New Mexico favored Obama, despite John McCain's aggressive targeting of them with advertising in Spanish and appeals that focused on his record in the military.

Geography also was key. Obama picked up a majority of voters in the Albuquerque area, the state's population center, and claimed more than 2-1 support in the traditionally Democratic northern half of the state.

The economy dominated the concerns of New Mexicans. Slightly more than half of all New Mexico voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the nation. Of those, nearly three-fifths favored Obama.

Obama engineered a similar victory in Nevada, where he won overwhelming support from minority voters.

Roughly three-quarters of Hispanics and more than nine in 10 blacks in Nevada voted for Obama, and the groups combined represented about one quarter of the total vote, exit polls said.

More than half of Nevada women backed Obama, while men supported McCain and Obama about evenly, the poll said.

In Colorado, where a third of registered voters are listed as independent, Obama led among unaffiliated voters. He also did well among women, moderates, Hispanics and people seeking change, according to an Associated Press poll of voters over the past week.

In New Mexico, new voters -- nearly three-quarters of them under 30 -- flocked to Obama. They backed him almost 3-1 over McCain. About one in eight voters said this was the first year they had cast a ballot. A majority of new voters were Hispanic.

Obama also took the middle political ground. He led McCain by 15 percentage points among independents; they accounted for more than a quarter of voters. Nearly three-fifths of moderates backed Obama.

In the New Mexico congressional delegation, all three incumbents -- Republicans Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce and Democrat Tom Udall -- gave up their seats to run for the Senate post being vacated by retiring Republican Pete Domenici.

On Tuesday, that turned into a windfall for Democrats. Udall beat Pearce, who had defeated Wilson in the June GOP primary.

And Pearce and Wilson's open seats in the House went to Democrats: Martin Heinrich, a former Albuquerque city councilman, defeated GOP candidate Darren White, a county sheriff. And oilman Harry Teague, another Democrat, beat GOP businessman Ed Tinsley.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state and dominate in statewide offices and the Legislature. But it's different in federal races, where moderate-to-conservative Democrats -- especially those in rural areas -- often tilt to Republican candidates.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the state by just 366 votes. In 2004, New Mexico went for Bush by fewer than 6,000 votes, making it one of only two states that shifted from blue to red that year.

------

Associated Press writers Catherine Tsai in Denver and Oskar Garcia in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Hispanics, Young Voters, Women Help Obama Win, NYT, 5.11.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Election-West.html

78 Percent Of U.S. Hispanics

Favor Obama Over McCain

November 4, 2008
Filed at 8:02 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

PHOENIX (Reuters) - In the final stretch to the presidential election, more than three quarters of likely Hispanic voters say they support Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain, a study found.

The Univision/Reuters/Zogby poll released on Tuesday said that 78 percent of a sample of 1,016 Latino likely voters favored Sen. Obama, with 13 percent supporting McCain, an Arizona senator.

The poll, which was conducted between October 30 and November 2, found that 54 percent of respondents said the economy and jobs were the most important issue in deciding who to vote for, followed by health care and immigration, with 12 percent and 11 percent respectively.

Hispanics make up 15 percent of the U.S. population and 9 percent of the electorate, and could be a critical swing voting bloc in battleground states in the U.S. Southwest as well as Florida on Tuesday.

In 2004, President George W. Bush won about 40 percent of the Latino vote -- a Republican record -- when he beat Democrat John Kerry. But opinion polls show Republican standing among Hispanics has since been hurt by a shrill national debate over immigration reform and a worsening economy.

A survey by Zogby International last month found that 70 percent of Hispanic likely voters favored Obama, with 21 percent favoring McCain.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor, editing by Chris Wilson)

78 Percent Of U.S. Hispanics Favor Obama Over McCain, NYT, 4.11.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-us-usa-politics-poll-hispanics.html

Obama and McCain

Expand Courtship of Hispanics

July 17, 2008
The New York Times
By LARRY ROHTER

ALBUQUERQUE — Three times this month, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have addressed national Hispanic advocacy and community service organizations. As a result, it is possible to draw a picture of the strategy and tactics that each of the presumed presidential nominees intends to employ to win the Hispanic vote, expected to be decisive in several states.

In the past, a common complaint among Hispanic voters has been that politicians tend to view them as a one-issue bloc, concerned only about immigration. Both presidential campaigns are taking care to avoid that trap, emphasizing issues like education, health care and housing as much as, if not more than, immigration and related border issues.

They also clearly recognize the role that the Hispanic electorate, its numbers swelling with newly naturalized citizens and a population that skews young, could play in November.

“The Latino community holds the election in its hands,” Mr. Obama announced Sunday in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza. Mr. McCain, meanwhile, imagined a situation in which election returns from the East were tight and everything came down to swing states like this one, where three of every eight voters are of Hispanic descent.

The candidates’ stances on the issues and their tone, however, are markedly different, as was evident in their speeches to La Raza. Mr. Obama, drawing on his background as a community organizer, evoked the theme of social justice and proclaimed his unqualified support for legislation that would allow high school students who are illegal immigrants to go to college or join the armed forces and gain legal residence status.

“I like everything he said he wants to do, especially for the poor,” Rafaela Garcia, leader of a community education and health services group in Kansas City, said after Mr. Obama spoke. “But then again, I’m a Democrat and will be one until I die.”

Mr. McCain’s message seems directed at what he views as the innate social conservatism of Hispanics. He seeks to appeal to their deep religiosity, strong and extended family ties and patriotism, and has also emphasized their propensity to create businesses of their own, with his support for more free trade with Latin America and special attention to Hispanics’ small businesses.

But on that last point, he may be hampered by his association with the Bush administration, even among those sympathetic to his message.

“I’m eager to hear what he has to say, but tax incentives do nothing for the people we serve, and the government has reduced or eliminated the grants that we need,” Cynthia Amador, who runs a small-business center for Hispanic women in Los Angeles, said before Mr. McCain’s speech to La Raza on Monday.

As for immigration, while both candidates say they favor comprehensive change in policy, there are differences in tone. Mr. Obama talks of 12 million undocumented immigrants in “hiding,” and of the need to “bring them in from the shadows.” Mr. McCain, from Arizona, a border state, says there are two million criminals among that group and also talks of drug traffickers manipulating immigrant flows.

Though the Hispanic population continues to disperse geographically, most still live in a handful of states rich in electoral votes. But those states are not likely to be the center of attention of the two campaigns’ Latino operations; California, New York and Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state, are all presumed to be safely in the Obama column, while Texas is considered almost a lock for Mr. McCain.

Of the populous states with big Hispanic populations, only Florida is regarded as up for grabs, with both campaigns making an effort there. Instead, much of the focus has shifted to several small or medium-sized states, among them Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, where Mr. McCain campaigned on Tuesday.

“We’re going to spend more money on Latino TV and radio than has ever been spent on a presidential campaign, and by a lot,” Cuahtemoc Figueroa, the director of Mr. Obama’s Latino vote effort, told members of La Raza on Sunday.

The campaign also views Mr. Obama’s half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who taught school for several years in the Bronx, as something of a trump card to be deployed at events for Hispanic voters. “She speaks fluent Spanish, with a Dominican accent, and looks Latina,” Mr. Figueroa said.

Hessy Fernandez, Mr. McCain’s spokeswoman for Hispanic issues, said he was conceding nothing and argued that Mr. Obama “has been losing support” among Hispanics since he clinched the nomination. (A New York Times/CBS News poll found that Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain among Hispanic voters by 62 percent to 23 percent.) Ms. Fernandez said Mr. McCain would “go places where no Republican has been before” in pursuit of Hispanic support.

Mr. McCain also has some unusual Hispanic surrogates from which to draw, she noted. For instance, his Naval Academy roommate, Frank Gamboa, has recorded a radio advertisement in Spanish in which he says that Mr. McCain “shares our conservative values and faith in God” and “knows that family is the most important thing we have and that we value hard work.”

Obama and McCain Expand Courtship of Hispanics, NYT, 17.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/politics/17hispanics.html

FACTBOX:

Statistical portrait

of Hispanics in U.S.

Sun May 18, 2008
9:11am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Hispanics, or Latinos, could play a significant role in the November U.S. presidential election.

Here's a look at their numbers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center's "Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2006."

Population: 44.3 million, 14.8 percent of total

Eligible voters: 17.9 million

Share of eligible voters: 8.7 percent.

Native born: 26.6 million

Foreign born: 17.7 million

Top countries of origin: Mexico 28.4 million, Puerto Rico 4.0 million, Cuba 1.5 million, El Salvador 1.4 million, Dominican Republic 1.2 million.

Top 10 Hispanic states by population (and percent of state population):

California 13.1 million (35.9 percent)

Texas 8.4 million (35.6 percent)

Florida 3.6 million (20.1 percent)

New York 3.1 million (16.3 percent)

Illinois 1.9 million (14.7 percent)

Arizona 1.8 million (29.1 percent)

New Jersey 1.4 million (15.6 percent)

Colorado 927,000 (19.5 percent)

New Mexico 874,000 (44.7 percent)

Georgia 696,000 (7.4 percent)

Same states by number of Hispanic eligible voters (and percentage of eligible voters):

California 5.0 million (22.8 percent)

Texas 3.6 million (24.6 percent)

Florida 1.7 million (13.6 percent)

New York 1.5 million (11.4 percent)

Illinois 704,000 (8.1 percent)

Arizona 678,000 (17.0 percent)

New Jersey 579,000 (9.9 percent)

Colorado 405,000 (12.3 percent)

New Mexico 492,000 (37.1 percent)

Georgia 147,000 (2.3 percent)

Hispanic median household income: $38,235

White median household income: $51,920

Black median household income: $32,198

Asian median household income: $63,390

Percentage of population in poverty: Hispanic 28.9 percent, white 11.3 percent, black 36.1 percent, Asian 12.0 percent, other 23.5 percent.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, editing by Doina Chiacu)

FACTBOX: Statistical portrait of Hispanics in U.S., R, 18.5.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1652751620080518?virtualBrandChannel=10112

1 in 100 Americans Are Behind Bars,

Study Says

February 28, 2008
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 is behind bars, but that one in 100 black women is.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”

“We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,” Ms. Urahn continued. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ’80s and ’90s.”

Now, with fewer resources available to the states, the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bond issues and from the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.

It cost an average of $23,876 to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year for each inmate in Rhode Island to just $13,000 in Louisiana.

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, a rate that will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year, making Texas’s prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000 inmates. But the Texas legislature approved broad changes to the state’s corrections system, including expansions of drug treatment programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.

“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time — rapists, murderers, child molestors,” said John Whitmire, a Democratic state senator from Houston and the chairman of the state senate’s criminal justice committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart about nonviolent offenders. The legislature finally caught up with the public.”

He gave an example.

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to consider earlier release of some prisoners.

Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were recycling nonviolent offenders.”

1 in 100 Americans Are Behind Bars, Study Says, NYT, 28.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html

Texas Hispanics

Face a Tough Choice in Primary

February 25, 2008
The New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON

SAN ANTONIO — As recently as two weeks ago, Rudy Davila III, a pharmacist, was part of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political firewall, the bloc of Hispanic voters from here to the border with Mexico whom she counted on to keep her presidential campaign from collapse. But the firewall is showing signs of cracking.

The Davila family has been doing business in this overwhelmingly Mexican-American city for more than 100 years, beginning with a corner grocery that in four generations has become a $16 million medical supply company. The same neighborhoods that propelled the Davilas’ business gave rise to powerful Mexican-American civil rights organizations, whose leaders built a following that has largely remained loyal to the Democratic Party.

It was loyalty to Mrs. Clinton that initially motivated Mr. Davila to support her candidacy. He said that not only had his family’s business prospered during Bill Clinton’s time in the White House, but that he also saw improvements across the city’s impoverished West side.

Mr. Davila’s loyalty weakened, however, after Mrs. Clinton began losing primary after primary. Then, after watching the effect Senator Barack Obama had on his community last week, feelings of loyalty were overcome by a sense of pragmatism.

“The lines to get into the plaza went more than a mile,” said Mr. Davila, showing photographs his assistant had taken at the Obama rally held less than half a block from his pharmacy. “The crowd was one-third white, one-third black and one-third Latino. I had never seen anything like it in San Antonio. And I knew right then he was the best candidate to defeat the Republicans in November.”

Here in the heart of Hispanic Texas, voters like Mr. Davila are being pulled hard from both directions. It is hard to interview a Clinton supporter at a coffee shop or taco joint without next running into someone supporting Mr. Obama. A P.T.A. meeting that started with polite applause during the presentation of the bilingual spelling bee awards ended in prickly political debate.

Recent polls have found the same trend that foiled Mrs. Clinton in her string of recent losses has begun to play out in Texas. Her double-digit lead over Mr. Obama has plummeted to a virtual tie. Mr. Obama has a significant lead over Mrs. Clinton among blacks and white men. His support among white women is about even with hers. And although she still has an advantage among Latinos — an estimated 25 percent of the electorate and some of her most steadfast supporters — that gap has begun to narrow.

With the Texas primary just over a week away, political pundits are reluctant to predict how things would ultimately play out among Texas’ Latino voters. Still, there is endless hashing over how Mr. Obama has made considerable gains in such a short time with an electorate whose ties to Mrs. Clinton date to 1972, when she registered voters along the border with Mexico in support of George McGovern.

But today’s Hispanic voters are a generally younger, more educated and more affluent electorate than they were two decades ago — qualities that make them impervious to Mrs. Clinton’s big-name endorsements.

For Hispanics in South Texas who live along the border, their ties to Mexico are little more than symbolic. Lydia Carrillo of the Southwest Voters Registration and Education Project said that most Hispanics here had been in this country for generations, and that they were just as concerned about issues involving education, the economy and health care as they were about an immigration overhaul.

Veterans groups pointed out that Houston and San Antonio had suffered the second- and third-highest numbers of fatalities from the war in Iraq, after New York, so Mr. Obama’s opposition to the war from the beginning resonated strongly here.

“Predicting a winner in the March 4 primary would be foolhardy,” wrote Jaime Castillo, a columnist at The San Antonio Express-News. “Hillary’s supporters are die-hards, the kind of voters who cast ballots in every Democratic primary. Obama’s backers are energized, but their commitment is untested over the long haul. They are an amalgam of party regulars, young kids, independents and the politically disenchanted.”

Other pundits and politicians echoed Mr. Davila, saying heart had less to do with Hispanic voters’ choices than hard-headed calculations about which Democratic candidate had the better chance of winning the White House.

“Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have strong platforms,” said Representative Charles A. Gonzalez, who has endorsed Mr. Obama. “It may sound clinical, but Hispanic voters, like all voters, not only want someone who speaks to their hearts. Obama is not only the best positioned to win in November, but also to live up to the promise to unite the country.”

Those who have managed statewide campaigns in Texas said the state had two important dividing lines: the one that marked the border with Mexico and the one marked by Interstate 10 from El Paso through San Antonio to Houston that divides North Texas from the south. North of the interstate are Texas’s prosperous, racially diverse economic capitals. The south is overwhelmingly Hispanic, and poorer, though the region has enjoyed some growth since the North American Free Trade Agreement turned the Rio Grande Valley into one of the most bustling commercial zones in the world.

Political analysts said Mrs. Clinton’s base of support had been the south, and they added that she remained stronger than Mr. Obama here. But because of the complicated way Texas selects its presidential nominee — a contest that is part primary and part caucus, and which assigns delegates to state Senate districts according to turnout during the 2004 presidential contest — the regions with the largest numbers of delegates are in the north, where Mr. Obama is expected to receive significant support.

“Texas is more like the South than the West,” said Antonio Gonzalez of the Southwest Voters Registration and Education Project. “Institutions, unions, community organizations are weak. Voters are increasingly individualistic. They are not organized on either the left or the right. So a charismatic candidate can come in and run the table.”

Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund agreed, saying, “Mrs. Clinton was counting on the old ward captains, and I’m not sure they’re really there anymore.”

Mrs. Clinton has endorsements from more than 100 Hispanic community leaders, businesspeople and elected officials. She has retained considerable support among Hispanic men. But Mrs. Clinton’s staunchest support is from Hispanic women, who see their own struggles in hers.

“I think as a female she’ll have more compassion for the elderly,” said Mary Louise Arce, 63. “We’ve become a lost group. Even doctors don’t take care of us the way they take care of the young.”

Mary Perez, wife, mother of two and president of the 20,000-member student body at San Antonio Community College, served as host to Chelsea Clinton at the campus last week. She said that she identified closely with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s drive and determination and that electing a woman would make a much bigger, and better, difference to the country, than electing a black man. And as a mother without medical insurance who said she had occasionally put her own health at serious risk in order to keep the rest of her bills paid, Ms. Perez said universal health care was much more important than affordable health care.

“I blocked out the pain as long as I could,” Ms. Perez, 26, said of a recent kidney infection that she waited several weeks to treat. “And then, when I started getting 105-degree fevers, I decided to go to the hospital.”

When asked whether she was still paying off the $10,000 bill, Ms. Perez voice cracked, “Yes.”

But Mr. Obama has made an aggressive play for some of Mrs. Clinton’s southern stronghold, with forays into the Rio Grande Valley to talk to students about his plans to offer tax breaks that would defer the costs of their loans, to veterans about building more military hospitals, and to single mothers about improving public schools.

As has been the case elsewhere, the tight race between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama has produced divided loyalties in Texas.

Mary Olga Montez, a retired military aircraft mechanic, said she had been focused on keeping the peace in her house. In her 53 years of marriage to her husband, Robert, an accountant, she said they had differed on presidential candidates numerous times. But Mrs. Montez typically kept her choice to herself — until this year.

“He kept telling people that both of us were supporting Clinton, so finally, I told him, ‘No. I’m supporting Obama,’ ” recalled Mrs. Montez, 73. “I said, ‘We need change. We need something different, new ideas.’ ”

Mr. Montez, 75, said: “How soon people forget. The Clintons did a lot for African-Americans, for Hispanics, for everybody. Now it seems like everyone’s forgotten.”

Referring to his wife, he half joked, “Some people, you just want to send them to the corner with a dunce cap on.”

When asked whether all the talk of politics had put a strain on their relationship, Mrs. Montez got the last laugh. “I just feed him a good dinner,” she said, “and that’s the end of that.”

Texas Hispanics Face a Tough Choice in Primary, NYT, 25.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/politics/25texas.html

For Hispanics in South Texas,

the Choice Is Tough

February 25, 2008
The New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON

For Hispanics in South Texas, the Choice Is Tough, NYT, 25.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/politics/25texas.html

Lending laws unenforced

in housing crisis: Jackson

Wed Feb 20, 2008
5:37pm EST
Reuters
By Michele Gershberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. mortgage meltdown has its roots in lending discrimination against African-American and Hispanic communities and requires federal intervention to prevent it from crippling municipal services, civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson said on Wednesday.

Jackson told the Reuters Housing Summit in New York that nearly 40 percent of subprime loans went to black and Hispanic families, many of them in districts once shunned by discriminatory "redlining" lenders who later devised a way to profit there by selling a flawed financial product.

"They began to stereotype and target and cluster whole communities. It's kind of like reverse redlining," Jackson said.

Jackson estimates that nearly half of those borrowers could have been eligible for regular loan packages, but instead were locked into mortgages that threaten to balloon out of their ability to pay when the adjustable interest rates reset.

"It suggests that if fair lending laws had been enforced ... we would not have had this global economic crisis," Jackson said. "But while it started by unenforced civil rights laws, the bleeding has not stopped there. It's now engulfing the budgets of cities and counties and states."

Jackson also said that the U.S. Department of Justice was slow to respond, if at all, to concerns of lending discrimination.

An estimated 1.5 million subprime mortgages, traditionally targeted at borrowers with poor credit histories, will reset to higher interest rates this year, putting many owners at risk of losing their homes. Another 500,000 will reset in 2009, according to Federal Reserve estimates.

Jackson said the federal government should institute a halt to foreclosure proceedings and authorize the Federal Housing Administration or another body to start a major restructuring of subprime loans, with lower interest rates and payments spread out over a longer period.

He also called on state attorneys general to subpoena the major lenders on their loan practices and impose penalties on those who have violated the law.

He described President George W. Bush's plan to offer $152 billion in tax rebates this year to fend off a possible recession as irrelevant to the needs of home owners facing foreclosure and ignoring the cause of the crisis.

(Editing by Gary Hill)

Lending laws unenforced in housing crisis: Jackson, R, 20.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/Housing08/idUSN2039245920080220