Latino Voters in Texas Wonder What "Change" Consists of

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/22/sanchez.latinos/

This article aimed at comparing and contrasting Hispanic's view of Obama and Clinton. Clinton wants to stop funding NAFTA and other free-trade agreements. This did not gain a good response from the Hispanic audience because many of the jobs within Texas consist of trading. They want to keep free trade and free flow of commerce between the U.S. and Mexico. Both Obama and Clinton have vowed to let Bush's tax cuts expire. If they really look at who that affects, however, they would realize that it hits the Hispanic community in Texas hard. Many of them own small businesses that were actually helped by these tax cuts. When they expire, it will be a huge tax increase. As for building the 700-foot long fence on the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama and Clinton both voted for it, but once they started their campaigns for Presidency, they changed their minds. However, of the respondents in this article, 70% said they supported the building of a fence on the border. They also felt that neither Clinton nor Obama spent enough time on the foreign policy between the U.S. and Cuba. Things are bound to change now that Fidel Castro has ceded power and gave it to his brother, Raul. This article gave some very interesting views that I did not expect.

The main thing that I noticed in this article was that the author used "Hispanic" rather than "Latino." As we discussed in the first few weeks of class, "Latino" tends to be very broad and it includes all of Latin America. "Hispanic," on the other hand tends to only include the Spanish-speaking countries. So in other words it excludes countries such as Brazil and Haiti. In class we have talked about the different groups that Mexican-Americans associate themselves with. I'm wondering if using "Hispanic" instead of "Latino" could have caused any flaws in her interviewing.

I thought that it was interesting that a lot of the main issues that Clinton and Obama talked about contradicted the views of the Hispanics in this article. The Latino vote is generally Liberal but this article makes it look like they don’t really agree with anything that the Democratic nominees say. I’m not sure if I believe everything that is said in this article, but it was an interesting point of view that both Clinton and Obama need to be more clear about what "change" may consist of.