HispanicTrending

Nov. 28, 2009
by James E. Garcia

Why should we care about the state of Latino Arizona?

For the record, “we” includes all Arizonans because Arizonans who happen to be Latino are part of our collective citizenry.

If you consider the demographic trends – the Latino population in Arizona grew 46 percent from 2000 to 2007, to 1.9 million (accounting for 30 percent of the population) – it’s reasonable to suggest that as Latino Arizona goes, so, too, goes the state.

Simply stated, Arizona’s future depends greatly on the growth and progress of its Latino community.

Arizona State University
and Arizona Latino Research Enterprise, a non-profit Latino advocacy group, recently unveiled a 94-page report titled “The State of Latino Arizona” during ALRE’s annual town hall. Most of the essays in the report were written and researched by the faculty of the department of transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at ASU.

Although the study does not necessarily offer the sort of “breaking news” nuggets that might be used to craft snappy front-page headlines, it breaks ground on other fronts.

For instance, it’s the first report of its kind to take a comprehensive look at Arizona’s rapidly growing and increasingly diverse Latino community. Never before has a group of scholars, journalists and community advocates (most of whom are Latino) taken the time to study in depth the progress and condition of the state’s Latino community. The report was about a year in the making.

The publication of “The State of Latino Arizona” comes in the wake of CNN’s two-part documentary, “Latinos in America,” about the growing role and influence of Latinos nationwide. The thing that differentiates “The State of Latino Arizona” from the CNN program is that so many of the creators of the Arizona study have a direct stake in the social, economic and political changes that the report brings to light.

ASU professor Eugene Garcia, for instance, writes about the daunting challenge we face as parents, educators and community leaders to keep our kids in school and ready them for higher education. Among Garcia’s findings:

• 75 percent of Arizona’s Latino children under age 6 live in poverty, compared with 30 percent of White children in that age group.

• 59 percent of Hispanic males and 70 percent of Hispanic females are finishing high school in Arizona, compared with 78 percent of White males and 85 percent of White females.

While colleges and universities statewide, including ASU, all have boosted efforts to recruit Latino students, the reality is that unless more of our kids graduate from high school, we may soon be coping with a potentially intractable underclass.

Failing to capitalize on the cultural affinity Arizona Latinos share with Mexico and Latin America by failing to educate our population also would limit our international competitiveness.

In many ways, the civil-rights issue of our time is about who has access to a quality education, a point made in the report by Raul Yzaguirre, an ASU professor and former head of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest and most influential Latino advocacy organization.

Despite such challenges in education, the study also presents cause for optimism about the state of Latino Arizona.

Although most of us acknowledge that fixing poverty and expanding educational opportunities for our children will take major financial resources (from both the public and private sector), the good news is the economic base for Latinos is growing.

Nationwide, the number of Latino-owned businesses is growing at twice the national rate, or approximately 8 percent a year (though the recession has probably slowed that growth).

The latest figures available (census 2002) showed that Arizona had about 35,000 Hispanic-owned business. At an 8 percent annual growth, Arizona could now have as many as 60,000 Hispanic-owned companies.

By 2008, Latino-owned companies, the overwhelming majority of which are small businesses, were predicted to have about $547 billion in annual gross revenue. Couple that with a recent estimate that finds that Latino consumers now spend about $1 trillion annually and we can see that our community’s pool of wealth is growing.

The issue, of course, is whether our economic growth is keeping pace with the expansion of our population. On that point, the 2010 U.S. census should prove instructive.

Another area where Latinos are making gains is in the political arena. Last year, more Latinos and a higher percentage of all Latino voters than ever before cast a ballot in a presidential election. And it was no accident that Barack Obama’s campaign borrowed “Sí se puede” (Yes we can) as one of its major campaign slogans or that Arizona Sen. John McCain’s campaign orchestrated its own broad effort to reach out to Latino voters.

So, what is the state of Arizona’s Latino community?

Like all Arizonans, the state’s Latinos have much to be proud of and a plethora of pressing issues to address.

In a way, the most significant achievement of the report is not that it offers an easy-to-digest report card on the state of the Latino community but a series of credible markers we can all use to help measure our state’s progress in the coming years.

That’s important. As the somewhat cliche, if apropos, saying goes: You need to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going.

The inaugural State of Latino Arizona report does a good job of showing us where we are.

Source: The Arizona Republic