Latino activism leads in grassroot efforts around climate change
PHOENIX — After experiencing global warming’s firsthand effects, U.S. Latinos are leading the way in activism around climate change, often drawing on traditions from their ancestral homelands.
“There has been a real national uprising in Latino activism in environmentalism in recent years,” said Juan Roberto Madrid, an environmental science and public health specialist based in Colorado for the national nonprofit GreenLatinos. “Climate change may be impacting everyone, but it is impacting Latinos more.”
U.S. Latinos often live in ignored, lower income neighborhoods that are degrees hotter than nearby areas because they have a higher population density and limited tree canopy. Hispanics are also disproportionately affected by chronic health conditions aggravated by extreme heat, like diabetes and heart and kidney disease.
Latino activists are now sounding the alarm about the risks of global warming for their neighborhoods and the world. They include a teen who protested every Friday for weeks outside U.N. headquarters in New York, a Southern California academic who wants more grassroots efforts included in global climate organizing and a Mexico-born advocate in Phoenix who teaches young Hispanics the importance of protecting Earth for future generations.
“Many members of the Latinx community have Indigenous roots,” said Masavi Perea, organizing director for Chispa Arizona, a program of the League of Conservation Voters. “A lot of us grew up on ranches, so many of us already have a relationship with nature.”
Walking through rows of kale, corn and squash at Chispa’s plot in a south Phoenix garden, the 47-year-old said he works to increase the group’s base and educate young members about environmental issues like climate change.
Perea, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Mexico, said Chispa members include Central Americans he calls “climate refugees” who fled countries battered by hurricanes and droughts.
Recent research shows most Latinos in the U.S. consider climate change an important concern.
A Pew Research Center study released last fall showed about seven in 10 Latinos say climate change affects their communities at least some, while only 54 percent of nonLatinos said it affects their neighborhoods. The self-administered web survey of 13,749 respondents had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.
Colorado College’s Conservation in the West Poll published this year showed notably higher percentages of Latino, Black and Indigenous voters in eight western states concerned about climate change, pollution and the impact of fossil fuels.
Latino and other communities of color are disproportionately affected by climate change, such as more frequent, intense and longer heat waves in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Palm Springs and other arid western communities.