The first statewide gathering of the Colorado Latino Forum was held at Horace Mann Middle School, now called Trevista but still a stunning building, a marriage of brick, practical and grounded, to idealism, aspiring and soaring.
It’s perfect for a school and, as it turned out, for the gathering.
The Latino Forum announced itself in a fury in January. Tom Boasberg had been named Denver superintendent. The school board chose him to replace Michael Bennet, whom the governor had selected seemingly out of nowhere to replace U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, who had taken a Cabinet job.
The sweet talk of campaigning politicians curdled in the ears of Latino movers and shakers. Again. Because, you might remember, these moves on the political checkerboard happened after a panel winnowed the applicants for Colorado secretary of state to three names, none of which were “Rosemary Rodriguez.” As in the former federal Elections Assistance Commission chair, the former Denver county clerk and City Council member, the woman who knows elections inside and out.
“This will have legs down the road, I swear it,” former state Sen. Paul Sandoval vowed at the time.
I am tempted to say he thundered, but Sandoval does not thunder. He formulates, and in his tactician’s mind was this: Twenty percent of Colorado’s population is Latino, and Latinos are the fastest-growing population in the state. State Latinos increased voter share from 8 percent in 2004 to 13 percent in 2008.
I went to the first statewide Latino Forum gathering because I wanted to see what had become of that anger, into what it has been transformed.
First, the anger hasn’t gone anywhere.
“The Colorado Latino Forum was born from conflict, from anger, from disappointment,” attorney Joseph Salazar told the group last weekend. “Isn’t that pretty much the history of Latinos in Colorado? We always have to fight. . . .
“The only time we get together is when we are getting kicked in the teeth or smacked in the nalga, but as soon as the pain goes away, we’re, like, ‘We’re going back into the house to have some tortillas.’ We have to figure out a way to be successful. We have moved into society, and we need to fight, and we need the help of the elder Latinos.”
They came, the elder Latinos, though they seem never to age or to tire. Polly Baca and Sandoval were once among nine Latino state legislators. Today, there are four.
“Remember, we’ve been this way before many times,” said Nita Gonzales, the unapologetic firebrand. “Your parents have been this way. The struggle doesn’t begin just because you are angry about something today. The struggle for justice and equality has been our struggle ever since the border crossed us, and I want to make that clear: ever since the border crossed us.”
It is not enough, she said, to sit at the table; “we must set the agenda.”
About 70 people attended. People came from Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Greeley, Aurora. First-generation Americans, old Chicano families, those who remember previous gatherings of outraged Latinos whose agendas were doomed by infighting, children of the legacy of struggle, college-educated professionals, veterans of street organizing.
The intergenerational nature of the Forum interests me, this collection of experiences formed and informed by very different times. This will either prove to be the Forum’s greatest strength or its undoing.
I offer here the obligatory caveat about the diversity of the Latino community, not a monolith, Republican and Democrat, etc., etc., though Saturday was the first time I met a man, the son of Latino dad and German mom, who said: “My dad calls me his little beanerschnitzel.”
I am aware, too, of the near-hysteria with which some view the kind of rhetoric employed at the meeting, of the complaints that Latinos are whining, of the suspicion that a nefarious power grab is afoot.
I’ll say this: Communities improve only because people within them come out of the kitchen, wipe the tortilla crumbs off their faces and work to improve them.
What I heard Saturday was an exhortation, a call to a community to raise itself to become accountable for its future, a future, by the way, that cannot be isolated from this state’s, this country’s, your future.
I’ll say again: That 30 or 40 or 50 percent of Latinos never graduate from high school does not simply hurt the Latino community, that our immigration policy is a disaster does not just hurt the Latino community. Education, health care, jobs, housing, they are everyone’s issues.
People spoke all day in that building where youth begin a journey promising equal opportunity in return for effort. They elected a board. They talked about redistricting and grooming candidates for elected and appointed offices.
They spoke of the mundane and of the lofty. They spoke both in anger and in recognition that anger is only a place to begin.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
