The Latino Vote: Presidential candidates pursue splintered bloc
It feels great to be desired. It feels even better to be empowered.
Danny Palacio is feeling both this election, but he's still not feeling so good - at least where his job, income and financial future are concerned.
As a Latino, he's part of a major voting bloc. But as an American, he's no different from anyone else marking a ballot.
"Individual situations vary," Palacio says, so he and other Latinos will vote "based on what they feel is right.
"That's the important thing."
Unless you're a candidate. Then the important thing is persuading voters.
With about 50 million Latinos in the United States, their voting bloc counts. The number of accent marks on speakers' names at the political conventions proved as much. So does hearing both presidential candidates say in local ads "apruebo este mensaje" - Spanish for "I approve this message."
That Latinos make up 26 percent of swing-state Nevada's population isn't lost on the campaigns of President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. But while both court the state's Latinos - people whose families hail from countries that span the globe and whose livelihoods range from poverty to upper class - the political lens needs a sharper focus.
A clearer view exposes faces, opens lives, tells stories and, yes, reveals decisions.
■ ■ ■
Margarita M. Varmaxidis, 84, shakes her ashy blond curls and closes her shimmering eyelids at the mere mention of the vandalism.
She would like to know which of her neighbors blackened his tooth. She wishes she had caught the artist who gave him those goofy glasses.
Yes, Varmaxidis can keep refurbishing the collage of Obama photos that plasters the front door of her senior-community apartment. But she's really getting tired of it.
The 4-foot-11 native of Argentina defends the commander in chief as though she were standing by his side daily in a dark suit and shades. She doesn't care if it means quarreling with people in her building, or anyone else.
"My country never gave me so many things this country gave me," she says, one bejeweled hand on her walker and the other punctuating her words. "I appreciate so much and I pray every, every day for this country. And now I pray every day for Obama."
Varmaxidis' arthritis led her from Miami to Las Vegas 10 years ago. Her condition kicked in well into her years as a nanny; as it worsened, she agonized over her survival and future.
Three days before her 63rd birthday, she received a "gift from God," more commonly known as her first Social Security check. Varmaxidis cried. And then she retired.
The long-widowed mother of three has lived in the United States for 50 years, through presidents such as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
According to her, the country was at its best when - she kisses her fingers and looks upward - "my Clinton" was running it.
Then George W. Bush took over and - she aims her thumb downward and whistles - "complete chaos." Varmaxidis tries explaining this to her neighbors, some of whom call her crazy for supporting Obama.
He's not even American, they tell her. You're stupid, she replies. Before long, someone pulls out a Sharpie and a senior citizen becomes a vandal.
It only further inflames her passion. She urges her peers at the Arturo Cambeiro Adult Day Care to vote - and to vote right. When they cite the president's empty promises, not taking into account the resistance she says he's gotten from Congress, the former flamenco dancer really ignites.
Just describing it causes her to pause, lay a hand to her chest and take a deep breath.
"He's not like Peron in my country," she finally says. "He was a dictador . But Obama, fortunately, is not."
The candidate who greets Varmaxidis when she arrives home every day sometimes appears toothless and spectacled. She can handle that look. A look of defeat Nov. 6 is another story.
■ ■ ■
It's lunchtime on a Tuesday at Roberto's Taco Shop, and customers want their carne asada burritos, super nachos and cheese enchiladas. With Cumbia music serenading their patience and the scent of spiciness testing it, they await their orders as more growling bellies crowd the restaurant.
Business is good for the 43 Roberto's around town. And it's good, says Reynaldo Robledo, 47, because of what his parents built, "not Obama."
His parents immigrated to San Diego with six children from the small village of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. In 1964, after years working in the fields, they opened a tortilleria out of their rental home. That tortilla store turned into a restaurant that turned into another restaurant that turned into a chain of restaurants across three states. The classic Mexican-American dream.
As the business grew, so did the family. Seven of the 13 Robledo children were born in the United States. Reynaldo is the 12th.
A family of that size, living in a four-bedroom home, doesn't go unnoticed. In the early restaurant days, before there was a car for every kid, social workers would come knocking. They had checks, programs, food stamps. A thoughtful gesture, but Roberto Robledo, the family patriarch and namesake responsible for those carne asada burritos, wanted none of it.
As the story goes, and in a family of 15 it goes and goes, he repeatedly refused assistance. He had a large family, yes, but it was his large family to support. Not the government's.
Roberto died in 1999, two years after becoming a U.S. citizen. He never voted and Reynaldo can't recall him expressing any political views. He only knows his father refused handouts and he wished more people did the same.
"Don't get me wrong," he says. "There's a lot of people who should get (government assistance). They need it. But there's a lot of abuse, too."
Reynaldo would count corporate bailouts among those abuses. If any of those companies had folded, he says, they wouldn't have caused the country to fold with them.
How can he be so sure?
"Because the United States has always been the No. 1 country in the world. Let's be honest, that's why my parents came from Mexico."
And that's why three luxury cars are parked in the driveway of Reynaldo's Mountain's Edge home.
As the man overseeing 41 Roberto's Taco Shops here, Reynaldo is choosing the presidential candidate he says "understands more the problems we're having as business owners."
In typical head honcho fashion, he is paying a surprise visit to one of his restaurants today. He sits in a booth, wearing a yellow work shirt emblazoned with his father's name, and chats with pleased patrons.
Through the glass door behind him, his midnight-blue Cadillac Escalade sparkles in the Las Vegas sun. The Romney sticker peering through its back window proudly proclaims his vote this election.
■ ■ ■
Melissa Perez's father avoids driving on or near the Strip. Too many cops. Her mother "freaks out" when she sees a marked police car. If sirens sound, even worse.
Perez's parents don't have criminal records, but they don't have papers, either.
They came to the United States from the poverty of tiny Durango, Mexico. When their daughter was born here, they decided to stay to give her a better future. Now 19, she votes for the first time next month and plans to return the favor.
Perez always knew of her parents' deportation fears. She didn't know she could do anything about it, though, until she joined the Hispanic Student Union as a Rancho High School freshman.
She enrolled in the bipartisan group that promotes community service, leadership and activism, simply to connect with other Latino kids. An only child, Perez is as close with her culture as she is with her parents. She speaks Spanish fluently, listens strictly to Mexican music and dances with a ballet folklorico group.
She had no idea Hispanic Student Union would expose her to politics. And she certainly didn't expect to care. When she heard immigration was one of 2008's hot-button election issues, however, she leaned in to listen closer. Among Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's promises was to stop separating undocumented parents from their children.
Perez started knocking on doors, urging people to vote. Two years later, she helped formulate questions for a woman running for U.S. Senate who made a highly publicized visit to her school. She doesn't remember much from that visit, unable today to even recall the candidate's name.
But she does remember this about Tea Party Republican Sharron Angle: "She told us we looked Asian."
Listening to political candidates wasn't just causing her to lean in, it was causing her to lean left.
Now a straight-A student at College of Southern Nevada, she plans to transfer to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and pursue a degree in criminal justice.
Perez is the family's shot to change its blue collar to white.
"My mom says she doesn't want me to struggle like them, or clean up after people, like her. Or, like my dad, he's been working construction his whole life. His hands are all messed up."
Her dad doesn't follow American politics much, but earlier this year he gave his daughter some advice. Don't vote for President Obama, he said, because "el no ha hecho nada" - he hasn't done anything.
When Perez marks her ballot, she'll think of her mother's reluctance to move to a new country. She'll think of her father and his hardworking hands. She'll think of the better life her parents wanted for her and the one she wants for them.
And because she cares so much for her father, she won't take his advice.
She'll vote for Obama.
■ ■ ■
Just outside Estela Vaden's home, men with brown faces toil away at pretty green landscaping. Inside, a political sign waits to be taken from the foyer and planted in her front lawn.
But Vaden's decision this election isn't motivated by what's happening in her home or just outside it. It's motivated, rather, by what's happening oceans and time zones away. Global issues concern her. They have concerned her since she was a little girl in Mexico, listening to her parents talk politics at the dinner table.
That's how Vaden, now 62, first learned about her Tio Gustav.
The family of her father, Hans "Juan" Moser, immigrated to Mexico from Germany in 1925. When his father died young, his mother couldn't support the family herself, which forced her to leave her two sons in an orphanage. She eventually rebounded and retrieved the two boys, but not before the experience bonded Gustav and Moser closer than just brotherhood ever could.
The family later sent Gustav back to Germany for college. Good intentions, bad timing. While he was there, Adolf Hitler took power.
"At that point, my uncle said it was either fight or be killed," Vaden says.
So, he fought until the war ended. Then it was stay put or face dire consequences, a message later reinforced one barbed wire at a time. Gustav, now in his 30s, was on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall when it went up in 1961.
Those talks at her family's dinner table often focused on when Papa would see Tio Gustav again. The answer: Not until 1975, 16 years after Vaden's family emigrated from Mexico City to yet another country, the United States. The East German government granted her ailing uncle a visa to see his family after more than 30 years apart.
The brothers, who last saw each other as teens, reunited as middle-aged men.
Today, Vaden just remembers a lot of Spanish, German, English - and joy - flying around during the visit. She was a grown woman, no longer living with her parents and no longer sitting at their dinner table. Her interest in global events plummeted. After her uncle's long plight, they really couldn't affect her again. At least, that's what she thought.
"I never realized decisions made thousands of miles from my front door would actually come knocking," she says.
Ten years later, Vaden owned a successful Mexican-American restaurant in Juneau, Alaska. When oil prices dropped, it devastated the town, which devastated her restaurant.
She lost everything, including her marriage, but she learned a lesson.
Since then, Vaden has kept a vigilant eye on the world outside her world. Now, more than ever, it worries her. The recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, relations with Israel, Iran's potential access to a nuclear weapon - all worry her.
This country needs leadership, she says. It needs a president who realizes foreign affairs and economics go hand in hand. She's voting for the man with a "stronger sense of our nation and its founding Constitution."
Now remarried, a naturalized citizen and retired in Las Vegas, Vaden watches Fox News and reads the Wall Street Journal to stay informed.
And she finally got around to hammering that Romney sign into her front lawn.
■ ■ ■
Mitt Romney has a question for Danny Palacio. The Republican candidate for president is on Palacio's radio, in his mailbox and on his TV asking the same, simple question: Is Palacio better off now than he was four years ago?
The answer is complicated.
In 2008, Palacio worked as a union pipe fitter, ran with a party crew and passed time as a graffiti artist. When he wasn't painting the town, he was painting the town.
A year later, Palacio got a pie in the face.
His girlfriend became pregnant, he went to jail for defacing public property and construction work all but vanished.
Palacio would be unemployed for a year.
If you want to motivate a 22-year-old to care about the economy, give him a baby and take away a $43,000 salary. Palacio stopped partying, stopped tagging and started paying attention.
"There was a lot of hype on the recession, so I started trying to do research on that," he says. "I started realizing how everything worked."
His conclusion? Everything works best when the middle class is at its best.
Palacio, 25, now earns "barely $15 an hour" as a customer service representative for a bank. He doesn't like the job he has held for two years, but compared to his friends, he can't complain.
"They stay at their parents' houses. Or they're moving from one apartment to another," he says. "And those issues obviously come down to jobs."
With son Lucas watching cartoons nearby, Palacio explains this in the dining room of his new home. Thanks to the suffering local real estate industry, he now owns 2,052 square feet of Las Vegas.
His life looks drastically different from the last time he voted for a president, but he is backing the same guy: Barack Obama.
"His agenda is more for middle-class people," Palacio says. "Romney's policy is just trying to provide more tax cuts for the rich."
And as for the Republican candidate's nagging question, "Yeah, I'm better off," Palacio says.
Although he longs to return to pipe fitting and its heftier paychecks, he can't overlook his new house and paid-off car or his almost 3-year-old son and expectant fiancee.
That said, if Romney or anyone else is asking simply because Palacio makes up an important voting bloc, he would like them to know something else.
Palacio is proud of his Latino heritage - half-Spanish and half-Nicaraguan - but he was born in the United States, feels 100 percent American and votes 100 percent like an American.
"Like I said, everyone's individual situations vary," he says. "Everyone's gonna vote based on what they feel is right. We'll see what happens from there on."