Mexican Americans and Sports: A Reader on Athletics and Barrio Life

Introduction: Athletics and Chicano/a Life, 1930–2005

1 On September 4, 2002, an exposé appearing on the ESPN website probably caught many auto-racing fans throughout the country by surprise. The title of Jerry Bonkowski’s article “NASCAR Aims to Attract Hispanics” is simple, yetitdescribesthenewdemographic,social,economic,andsportingrealities of life in the United States in the twenty-first century.1 The article details the attempt by “a sport with roots steeped in the South” to engage a whole new fan base. The numbers Bonkowski cites are difficult for marketing executives to dismiss: Spanish speakers are projected to constitute approximately 20 percent of the national populace by 2020, and, by 2050, that figure is expected to reach 25 percent. The potential benefits of increasing the attraction of auto racing to this population are spelled out by Eddie Gossage, chief overseer of the Texas Motor Speedway (in the Dallas–Fort Worth area): “It’s very important to us to make our sport more open and aggressively promote to the minority community. . . . So, we do things like produce press releases in Spanish, produce ads for Hispanic newspapers, have promotions with local Hispanic businesses, work with all of the Spanish media outlets. . . . We’ve identified the Hispanic market as a very key market.”2 According to Bonkowski, NASCAR has taken a two-pronged approach at the corporate level in order to increase its Hispanic fan base. First, manageI N T R O D U C T I O N Athletics and Chicano/a Life, 1930–2005 jorge iber ment hired Dora Taylor, a Cuban American, as senior manager for diversity affairs. Her responsibilities include increasing the number of Latinos in three key areas: spectators, drivers, and team owners. Taylor has a proven track record in working with organizations such as the previously scandal-plagued Denny’s Restaurant chain, which at one time had dealt unsuccessfully with its minority customers. Second, in 2000, NASCAR formed an internal diversity council, whose members include some of the most recognized names in the circuit: Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon; team owner and coach of the Washington Redskins, Joe Gibbs; and former driver and now broadcaster Ned Jarrett. It is their responsibility to “formulate strategies to get more minorities involved in the sport, be they Hispanic, African American, Asian, or female.”3 A critical first step in this process is to get more Latinos behind the wheel at NASCAR events. Cuban American Félix Sabates, the first Spanish-surnamed person to own teams in the Busch and Winston Cup tours, argues that, until there are more participants, auto racing will continue to lag behind other sports in the drive to increase the number of fanáticos (fans). “The potential is there, but you have to have the drivers. You have to have the Martinezes and GomezesandGonzaleses.But,ifyoucouldchangeJeffGordon’snameto,say, Jaime Gordino, that would be good. That would bring a lot of attention.”4 Track manager Gossage agrees: “It’s not realistic for us to expect minorities to attend races when no minorities are participating. The first step is to get some minority participants in our sport, and it can grow and take off from there.” Another Cuban American involved in auto racing, Mike Vázquez, a team owner in the Busch Series who recently hired Colombian-born driver Roberto Guerrero for his squad, argues similarly: “Up until now, NASCAR has been ignored by the majority of the Hispanic community. Even when I was a kid,I’dtuneoutafterthefirst10or15minutesbecauseIcouldn’tseea[nEmerson ] Fittipaldi or [Ayrton] Senna or even Roberto Guerrero. I had no Hispanics to identify with. I’ve since come to respect names like Petty and Yarborough , but back then it didn’t mean squat.”5 Whether NASCAR ultimately succeeds or fails in its quest to attract signi ficant numbers of our nation’s Spanish-surnamed population as observers and on-track participants remains to be seen. Although NASCAR has traditionally ignored the vast majority of Spanish speakers, its attempts to branch out and deal with the nation’s new demographic and economic realities has considerable ramifications for the broader study of sport. 2 J O R G E I B E R During the 1980s and 1990s historians and others who are interested in minority populations produced voluminous research on sport’s impact on neighborhoods and schools throughout the United States. The majority of these works focus on the white/black dichotomy. Researchers such as Robert Ruck, David K...