The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics (review)

In this important, comprehensive, and carefully researched book, Kenneth Burt has unearthed the origins and mapped the historic evolution of Latino political power in California, tracing an unbroken arc of ascension that, Burt argues, began in the 1930s, much earlier than has been generally understood. But, in a struggle against discrimination and economic hardship that continues today, Latino electoral gains have not come swiftly or easily. Growing up in East Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s, Antonio Villaraigosa, the former speaker of the California Assembly and current mayor of Los Angeles, notes in the book's foreword: "It often seemed Edward Roybal was the sole representative for millions of Spanish-speaking people."

Today, more than a thousand Latinos hold public office in cities and counties across the state, Latino lawmakers dominate the state legislature, and three of the last five speakers of the Assembly have had a Spanish surname. Burt shows how this revolution was engendered by painstakingly constructed coalitions and tireless efforts to register, motivate, and mobilize voters. In doing so, he offers a revisionist view of the dominant narrative of the impact of the Cold War, which holds that anti-Communism unraveled the civil rights–trade union alliance and set back the Latino battle for full citizenship.

Grounding his narrative in the larger progressive social movement of the 1930s, Burt details Roybal's precarious path to power as he built the Community Services Organization (CSO), which became the major Latino political base, and negotiated the internecine skirmishes between his liberal left supporters and Communists. Even as Roybal and the Latino community fought to end police brutality in incidents such as the Zoot Suit riots, the Communists often sought to provoke police violence to serve their own political agenda.

Militant but nonviolent, CSO managed to survive in the hostile Southern California environment thanks to the singular political skills of Roybal and other CSO leaders who built and nurtured a coalition that included progressive labor leaders, the Catholic Church, the Jewish community, and liberal left Anglos. Early on, they established ties with Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. On a 1947 visit to Los Angeles, Alinsky met Fred Ross, who had been organizing Mexican Americans in outlying rural communities, and hired him on the spot. Ross, a legendary organizer and one of the many heroes of this saga, used voter registration to identify Latino leaders and empower the community.

Among the many leaders nurtured by Ross and CSO were a young farmworker named César Chávez and a schoolteacher named Dolores Huerta, both of whom proved to be natural leaders and born organizers. When Chavez and Huerta left CSO to form the United Farm Workers (UFW), they took with them the CSO model of organizing workers in a context of community involvement and civic participation. By 1980, the UFW would become part of the Sacramento political establishment, second only to the California Medical Association in donations to legislative candidates and ballot measures.

As Latino voters gained strength and influence in the mid-1950s, they attracted national attention, and their once solid Democratic front began to fracture. Eisenhower appealed to Latino veterans who had gained entry to the middle class through service in World War II, and in 1956, for the first time, a significant number of Latinos cast their votes for a Republican.

Reverting to type in 1958, Latino voters helped break the Republican stranglehold in California, electing Pat Brown and defeating a right-to-work initiative. Roybal exulted: "The sleeping giant is beginning to awaken." All it needed was a national symbol to rally around. In 1960, John Kennedy brought the giant to its feet, and Latinos emerged as a national political force. Viva Kennedy, organized and run nationally by Latinos, delivered 85 percent of the Latino vote for Kennedy. Under Pat Brown and a Democratic legislature, California provided old age assistance to non-citizens, curtailed police abuse, and made it easier for Latinos to register and vote. Roybal...