Monday, January 21, 2008

Who gets to say they're Latino?

On the surface, it is just a Chicago neighborhood election for a seat in the Illinois Senate.

But the candidates wishing to go to Springfield to represent a set of Northwest Side neighborhoods have managed to touch on an issue that impacts Hispanic people across the United States. Namely, who exactly gets to use the label “Latino?”

Illinois state Rep. Rich Bradley, D-Chicago, a 12-year veteran of the Illinois House of Representatives, says he has decided to try to move up politically to a higher-ranking office. He has decided to run for a seat in the Illinois state Senate.

What is really happening here is that the daughter of Chicago Alderman Dick Mell has decided she wants to run for political office, and she has decided to run for the post now held by Bradley. To avert a political brawl with the family of a high-ranking Chicago alderman, Bradley decided it would be easier to knock off the incumbent state senator from his home neighborhood.

That would be state Sen. Iris Martinez, D-Chicago, who understandably has no desire to be dumped from electoral politics just because Bradley is being squeezed out of his incumbent position.

Martinez is appealing to the growing Spanish-speaking population in the neighborhoods represented by the legislative district, hoping to get them to comprehend that some “Anglo” guy is trying to knock one of their own out of a political post.

There’s only problem with this strategy.

It turns out Bradley has just as much right to claim the Hispanic/Latino label as Martinez. His mother’s side of the family comes from Mexico. His grandparents on his mother’s side of the family come from the Mexican state of Guanajuato (which also happens to be the state where my paternal grandfather was born).

If Bradley had been named in the Castilian Spanish tradition, he would be Ricardo Bradley Cerda.

His mother went so far last week as to have her son’s campaign distribute a prepared statement on her behalf demanding an apology from Martinez about her claims that Bradley is just another political white boy.

“As a woman proud of her 100 percent Mexican background, I was shocked and appalled to… read that Iris Martinez’ campaign had called my son the ‘non-Latino’ candidate,” Margaret Cerda said. “This is an insult to our family, who always took pride in their Latino heritage after moving to the United States from Mexico.”

For what it’s worth, Bradley has not kept his ethnic ties a secret. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund – which wants to elect as many Hispanic/Latino lawmakers as possible – made a special effort to ensure that political people who prepared the legislative district boundaries in 2001 were aware of Bradley’s Mexican ethnicity so that he would be given a “safe” district to run for office in.

Now I don’t expect Martinez -- who in 2003 became the first Latina/Hispanic woman elected to serve in the Illinois Senate – to get all concerned about hurting Rich Bradley’s feelings. I don’t expect her to issue an apology anytime soon to Margaret Cerda.

It doesn’t even surprise me to learn that candidates are taking verbal cheap shots against their political opponents. Electoral politics played by “Chicago rules” almost mandates such accusations – particularly in the lower level legislative races where about the only way to gain any attention from potential voters is to stir up some sort of trouble.

But dragging ethnicity issues into this political debate stinks.

I would hate to think that Hispanic/Latino people are going to have to start providing detailed genealogical studies in order to justify their use of the ethnic label. I wonder if, to people like Martinez, I need to start identifying myself as “Gregorio Tejeda Vargas,” just to reiterate that grandparents on both sides of my family came from Mexico.

I’m not comfortable bringing up degrees of ethnicity and trying to set standards about who qualifies and who does not. To my mindset, it reeks too much of the old racial standards by which people in this country were judged based on what percentage of “white” versus “black” blood they allegedly had coursing through their veins.

Bradley actually wouldn’t be the most prominent political victim of Hispanic confusion.

Aides to former Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson said their efforts to gain support among Latino/Hispanic voters would have been so much easier had their candidate had a Spanish last name.

Would candidate Guillermo Richardson Lopez (that’s what his name would have been, had his Irish-American father and Mexican mother named him in the Castilian Spanish tradition) be running even with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in this year’s presidential race?

Who’s to say?

With his droll campaign style and lack of decent funding, Richardson might still be on his way back to Santa Fe to fulfill his duties as New Mexico governor. But there wouldn’t be so much confusion about his ethnic roots, even though to me one look at Richardson’s face makes me see his “mestizo” roots and realize that he is a “Mexicano” at heart.

Then, there’s my all-time favorite Hispanic/Latino guy who got stuck going through life with an Anglo name – the late actor Anthony Quinn.

He was born Antonio Quinn Oaxaca in Mexico, and the Irish Quinn portion of his name originated with his paternal grandfather, who married into a Mexican family and went native.

Be honest.

How many of you assumed after watching “Zorba the Greek” and seeing his skin tone, that Hollywood went out and got a real Greek guy to play a Greek part? They didn’t, although Quinn’s appearance there is not as ridiculous as the notion of Natalie Wood playing the female lead role of a Puerto Rican girl in the film version of “West Side Story.”

In Quinn’s case, he got the chance to play Mexican roles when he was more established in his career – particularly in the 1978 film “Children of Sanchez,” based on a 1950s sociological study of life in a Mexico City slum neighborhood, and 1995’s “A Walk in the Clouds.”

Getting back to Bradley, he is just as much as Mexican as an Irish guy. His half-Anglo roots should not be held against him. Nobody’s perfect.

Having the ethnicity issue brought up is just too low a blow, even in a city where a liberal Jewish guy once campaigned for mayor against a black man by urging voters to cast their ballots for him, “before it’s too late.” Besides, there are enough other issues for the two to run on. It’s not like Bradley and Martinez ought to be natural allies.

Bradley is a long-time supporter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, whereas Martinez is allied with state Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, and has said publicly she sides with Gov. Rod Blagojevich in his political differences against Madigan.

I have no problem if the two of them want to turn their legislative campaigns into a surrogate brawl between the forces of Madigan and Blagojevich. That’s fair play. As writer Finley Peter Dunne’s ever-quotable Chicago bartender character Mr. Dooley often told us, “politics ain’t beanbag.”

-30-

Originally posted at www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com

3 comments:

Anonymous,  12:05 PM  

State Representative Rich Bradley and his wife Cook County Water Reclamation District Commissioner Cynthia Santos are the luckiest uneducated and unqualified political couple in Chicago.

Cynthia Santos pretends to be a Latina while her real first married name was Siciliano and Santos is a Greek name. She won in 1996 after Miriam Santos was at the height of her popularity getting more votes than Richard M Daley in the 1995 municipal election. Her claim to fame was being the secretary to Alderman Mike Wojcik, who she later betrayed.
Rich Bradley was working at minimum wage selling lamps before he worked for convicted felon Joe Kotlarz the alderman than state rep and committeeman for Alderman Mike Wojcik.
Santos is an adulterer and had no qualifications. Bradley an uneducated political hack.
They went from 2 low level secretarial and sales jobs to FOUR 4 political patronage jobs ripping off the taxpayer.
There have been numerous articles about the Bradley family being employed at the city.
Rich Bradley was part of the Streets and Sanitation of the convicted and indicted corruption.
Now Rich Bradley in a diabolical triple cross deal with Melma Old Gringo is trying to take the only Hispanic female in the State Senate out with phony Rich Bradley.
And Rich Bradley is trying to take out the only Hispanic on the Cook County Water Reclamation with his Greek wife Cynthia Santos who cheated on and left Siciliano and has no qualifications.

If Bradley and Santos were both to win it would be devastating to Latino Political empowerment.
The only Latina Iris Martinez in the Senate would be removed.
Commissioner Avila will lose because Melma Old Gringo will betray him so Cynthia Santos can win. They are trying to fool the Latino voters with Santos name to take out Avila and Martinez. Melma is working with the corrupt Victor Reyes who betrayed Iris Martinez. The Latino voters should not be fooled by this double cross by Melma Old Gringo.

Anonymous,  12:25 PM  

I don't think the main issue is that Bradley does not have some Mexican blood in his veins or his mother is not Mexican BUT that Rich Bradley did not promote or even accept his Hispanic heritage until it became convinient to do so. Rich Bradley who had a lot of access to jobs through illegal patronage helped mostly his own family. So the only Hispanics he helped with his jobs were his own family.

The real reason that Bradley is running against Iris Martinez is because co-schemer A Victor Reyes the head of the embattled HDO linked to drugs, gangs, and corruption betrayed Iris Martinez and made a deal with Alderman Richard Mell.

The real example of Political disempowerment mentioned above is that Commissioner Frank Avila is 100% Mexican and the only Hispanic on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board. Cynthia Santos is not Hispanic at all. She is Irish and Greek. She never took her husbands name Bradley. Her last name used to be something else from her first husband which she changed. SANTOS IS NOT HISPANIC AT ALL!!!!
but she neglects to tell people that

Rich Bradley besides being a State Rep is also a Streets and Sanitation employee, a double dipper at taxpayers expense. He has many family members on Streets and Sanitation.
Cynthia Santos, the non Hispanic getting Hispanic votes under false pretenses, has a job at Secretary of State besides being a Commissioner at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
Commissioner Santos did not get endorsed because she went on vacation and alienated a lot of committeeman.
Santos and Bradley are both close to convicted felon John "Quarters" "Jingles" Boyle.
Rich Bradleys mom works at the Metropolitian Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
More nepotism and patronage.
Cynthia Santos has a MWRD car with a sun roof she got custom designed and drives around at tax payer expense.

Mothers, brothers, cousins
the Santos/Bradley exploiting Hispanics team is costing taxpayers MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

Lower your property taxes vote against Bradley and Santos.

Victor Reyes is using Santos to defeat Commissioner Avila and cut a deal with Richard Mell to screw over Avila because HDO wants to defeat Avila. The Avila's are to blind and think Mell is on their side but Mell is betraying the Avila's and no Hispanic will be on the County Board.

Anonymous,  7:14 AM  

"Bradley is a long-time supporter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, whereas Martinez is allied with state Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, and has said publicly she sides with Gov. Rod Blagojevich in his political differences against Madigan."

And with that statement, you got it right. That race is all about political alliances. Iris Martinez made some very bad choices when she decided whose side to take. Now no one wants here. Not HDO, not Daley, not the unions, and not her constituents. All she has left is Emil Jones.

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