Mike Figueras, the Youth Coordinator at El Pueblo, agreed to talk to us via phone to understand the viewpoint of someone working at an organization devoted entirely to the Latino Population. In a way, he provided a narrative opposite of Isela’s interview – a primary focus on the Latino population, and secondly on the idea of the vote. The key points of our conversation are as follows:
- There is a large undocumented Latino population here in North Carolina. The vote is not an issue with them.
- A portion of Latino citizens in NC work blue collar jobs, perhaps 7am to 5pm, and thus struggle with less time to go to the polls.
- NALEO and El Pueblo are working together to try to increase the number of bilingual poll monitors, as the assumption that all voters are monolingual English speakers in not accurate at all.
- One of the biggest issues from the 2013 voting change for El Pueblo is the elimination of pre-registration for young people, as they used to go into NC high schools and help out with this.
- The Latino voting population is very young – both due to demographics and perhaps due to the fact that many older Latinos who lived and voted in Latin American countries knew their vote wouldn’t count. El Pueblo is trying to work with the Latino youth to diminish the effect of these assumptions.
- Many Latinos are typically conservative by nature but anti-immigration laws usually by conservative politicians creates a dichotomy in choice for this group.
- El Pueblo has turned more towards influencing college students, especially getting involved with Naturalization Ceremonies and Latino clubs on UNC, Meredith College, and NC State Campuses locally.
