Hispanics in Illinois: an unfinished political agenda

By ISIDRO LUCAS and LUIS M, SALCES

ELECTION '80 is over. Analysts, politicians and pundits are trying to make sense out of the results. Some are predicting an ominous turn to the right; others are gloating that their time has finally come.

As far as Hispanics in Illinois are concerned, the analysis needs to take a different tack: Election '80 happened without Hispanics. We do not have the exact figures that would allow us to make a formal voting analysis. However, one thing we can safely say is that Hispanics were once again outside of the electoral process.

Nationally, approximately 67 percent of all Hispanics eligible to vote did not even register for the 1980 election. The story is the same in Chicago. Chicago's Hispanic population is approximately 450,000. Of these, only 50 percent or 225,000 are eligible to vote on the basis of age. Of the total number of eligible Hispanic voters in 1978, the Chicago Board of Elections counted 72,941 registered voters. This figure represented an increase of only 345 registrants from the 72,592 registered in 1976. Yet at the same time the Hispanic population is growing steadily in the city and the state, at a rate estimated by some informed sources to be as high as 8 percent per year. Obviously, Hispanic voters are not increasing at anywhere near this rate.

Hispanics constitute an Illinois population which has not been allowed entrance into the political life of the state. Latin American sociologists have coined a new word to describe populations that are systematically kept outside of the political and economic process. They are the marginated. In that context, one can define Hispanics in Illinois as the most marginated of ethnic-racial minorities, insofar as economics and political life are concerned.

Several facts support this conclusion. There is no single Hispanic member of the Illinois General Assembly. There is no single Hispanic alderman in the city of Chicago. The only statewide elected office held by a Hispanic was that of a University of Illinois trustee. In the Chicago area, the site of the highest Hispanic concentration, the only elected Hispanic officials are two Chicago municipal judges and one Cook County commissioner.

In the absence of elected officials, Hispanics have relied for representation at state and local government levels on the good offices of appointees, who serve as advocates and as avenues for the elected officials to the Hispanic communities. The dangers of such an approach are obvious. Governor Thompson now has a special assistant for Hispanic affairs, but he appointed her only in the third year of his administration.

Level of powerlessness

Dismal as the picture is in Illinois, it is similar to that found in national Hispanic politics. A recent nationwide review of state elected officials, based on information provided by the Council of State governments, showed that of 7,562 state legislators in the country, only 80 are Hispanics. Los Angeles counts a Mexican American population exceeding one million, and yet it parallels Chicago in not having a single elected councilman. "Major" state elected officials number only 302 nationwide; only four of these, all in New Mexico, are Spanish-surnamed. A similar picture emerges on the federal scene, where there are no Hispanic senators and only four congressmen, in addition to the nonvoting commissioner from Puerto Rico.

The level of powerlessness revealed by these figures cannot be completely accounted for by voter apathy. James Coleman of the University of Chicago has offered the explanation that an identifiable social group, before it fully embarks into the political process, must have achieved a level of economic and social "leisure" which allows the group to think of matters less immediately pressing than day-to-day survival. The limited political involvement of Hispanics in Illinois and the country can at least partially be explained by their lack of economic well being. The latest Bureau of Labor statistics, reflecting data of the third quarter of 1980, indicate that income for Hispanics is lower, nationally, than that for blacks.

Decade of the Hispanic

The 80's have been called the Decade of the Hispanic. Demographic trends, showing a growth rate of the Hispanic population of five or six times that of the entire population, would warrant that label. However, demographics alone will not achieve a higher percentage of Hispanic participation in the electoral process. There is need for a new political agenda. Hispanics should no longer be gerrymandered into representative districts where they will remain numerical minorities. As the Chicago City Council maps out the new wards, it can no longer prevent the creation of a Hispanic ward, necessitated by city population trends.

The 80's may prove the decade of Hispanics also in that there is a new vitality, a new sense of consciousness, and a serious, albeit limited, attempt by Hispanics to participate in the mainstream of the political process. The 1980 primaries produced the first Hispanic committeeman in a Chicago ward. Mayor Byrne recently appointed the first Hispanic to the mayoral cabinet, Dr. Hugo Muriel, the commissioner of health. The 1980-appointed Chicago Board of Education counts three Hispanics among its 11 members, and other boards and commissions in the city have also acquired Hispanic members. The legislature continues, ever so grudgingly, to appropriate moneys for the continuing operation of the Spanish Speaking Peoples Study Commission, a group that advocates for Hispanics with the General Assembly and shares government information with the various Hispanic communities in the state.

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On the other hand, Hispanic youths, with unemployment rates paralleling those of blacks and with no avenue for political participation, are constituting time bombs with short fuses. Drop-out — or as communities prefer to call them, "push-out" — levels have reached over 70 percent for Puerto Rican pupils in the Chicago public schools. Illinois, like the rest of the country, can no longer afford to ignore Hispanics and their desire to join in the political process. When all is taken into account, the movement of the state in this regard is too slow — in fact, it is almost unnoticeable. No wonder Hispanics are not running out to vote: Illinois must set up a stronger vehicle of information for this minority. Hispanics will participate more actively once they know what the issues are, what their role can be in affecting them, and what they will gain from their place in the political process.

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