Latinos poised to play a pivotal role in midterm elections
Along Bright Avenue in Whittier wedged between a hair salon and tutoring business, is the home and interior design store Amanda Alvarado toiled and sweated years over many years to afford.
Alvarado grew up in Boyle Heights, a workingclass barrio where luxuries are few and far between. But even before he hit adolescence, her mother, a Mexican immigrant, taught her a lesson money could not buy.
Belia Lagunas became an American citizen. Politically active, she traveled to Sacramento to push for sound barriers along Interstate 5 that were parallel to the Eastside neighborhood. The most enduring political lesson Lagunas passed on to her children might have been the simplest.
“As soon as she became a citizen, she went out and voted,” Alvarado said. “That was the first thing she wanted to do.”
Lagunas, who died at 63 in 2012, carefully studied voter guides and did not miss elections. When she went to the polls, she took her two daughters. When Alvarado turned 18, she cast her first ballot, got her “I Voted” sticker and never looked back.
“After everything she went through to get to where she was,” she said of her mother, “I couldn’t let that go to waste.”
Voters like Alvarado are a valuable political commodity. They make up the relatively small percentage of eligible Latino voters who cast ballots.