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Maria Perez of Marshalltown, Iowa attends a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in her town on Sunday. Photograph: John Richard/The Guardian
Maria Perez of Marshalltown, Iowa attends a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in her town on Sunday. Photograph: John Richard/The Guardian

Iowa’s Latino voters mobilize for caucus as 2016 candidates vie for their support

This article is more than 8 years old

Latinos are a small but fast-growing part of state’s population, and Democratic candidates are competing for their votes by focusing on immigration policy

On Sunday, dozens of meatpacking workers and their families gathered in a spartan banquet hall in this central Iowa town to discuss ongoing union negotiations with their employer, JBS Swift and Co. As they entered, each received a copy of Hola Iowa, a local paper featuring an interview with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

At the snack tables, where a woman handed out doughnuts, they waited for the meeting to begin, some of them thumbing through the paper. Published in Spanish and English, the first-page editorial urged Latinos to vote in Iowa’s 1 February caucus.

“In 2016, as Latinos in Iowa, we should make it our duty to participate in this sacred Iowa tradition,” wrote Christian Ucles, the political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa (Lulac).

“We have so much to lose if we don’t participate; we have so much to lose if candidates (like Trump) think they can dehumanize and demonize our community all because they don’t fear our voting power.”

Though Iowa’s Latino population remains relatively small compared to other states, it has grown enough over the past decade that it is no longer ignored. Democratic candidates are now courting its members, including in small rural towns, by emphasizing their immigration proposals and other views that resonate with the Latino electorate.

Leading the union meeting in Marshalltown was Joe Enriquez Henry, of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, who is in the middle of a statewide campaign to turn out 10,000 Latino voters on caucus night.

The organization has been canvassing heavily Latino pockets of the state, going door-to-door to encourage residents to caucus and offering training on how to participate in the state’s communal voting process.

A meat processing facility employee wears a political sticker during a meeting on Sunday in Marshalltown, Iowa. Photograph: John Richard/The Guardian

Immigration has dominated the 2016 presidential campaign discourse from the early days of the cycle. And while Republicans, led by Donald Trump, who promised to build a wall along the US-Mexico border that Mexico would pay for, have swerved sharply to the right on immigration, Democrats have pulled to left, all supporting a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who meet certain restrictions.

In Des Moines on Monday night, the three Democratic candidates are expected to discuss their views on immigration as well as other issues affecting Latino communities at the Black and Brown debate hosted by the Hispanic channel Fusion.

Lulac’s outreach has targeted the Latino communities sprinkled throughout the state in migrant cities like West Liberty, Muscatine and Storm Lake and meatpacking towns like Columbus Junction and Marshalltown.

Trump’s affront to the Latino community, calling them “rapists” and “criminals”, has raised the stakes in this election, Enriquez said.

“This hate-mongering is in turn galvanizing our community,” he said. “We’re at that critical point – we have the numbers now where we can mobilize and really have an impact this February.”

Latinos are a small but fast-growing segment of Iowa’s once lily-white population. The 170,000 Latinos in Iowa are now its largest minority, making up 5.6% of the population – a figure that is expected to rise in part because Latinos are significantly younger than their white neighbors and have higher birthrates.

Yet despite the grassroots efforts to increase voter turnout, Latinos don’t yet have the numbers to dramatically influence the state’s nominating contest, said Mark Grey, director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration and a professor of anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa.

“At the statewide level, there are still relatively few Latinos eligible to vote,” Grey said. “So at that statewide level, they don’t hold a lot of political influence, though locally, they may. And I’m sure a growing number of them through the years will caucus.”

But for those working to change the situation, the moment is now.

In below freezing temperatures, Maru Abarca, 23, on Sunday spent the morning knocking on doors in the southside of Des Moines, where a concentration of Latino families live.

“We’re tired of sitting back and being underestimated,” Abarca said. “There’s a huge grassroots movement going on here in Iowa. We’ll see what happens on caucus night.”

With less than three weeks until the Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest of the 2016 election, the meatpacking town of Marshalltown is again a player in the battle for the state’s Latino votes.

An industrial and agricultural town in central Iowa, Marshalltown used to be as white as the rest of the state. But with the expansion of the meatpacking industry in the midwest in the 1980s came an influx of Hispanic workers and their families. Though the work was gruelling and dangerous, the wages were much higher compared with jobs in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Now, nearly a quarter of the town’s population is Hispanic.

In 2006, the migrant town was devastated by an immigration raid at the Swift and Co meatpacking plant, one of the small town’s biggest employers. Dozens of workers were arrested, and parents were separated suddenly from their families.

“I do remember there was a raid when I was in high school, and families were being taken away and some children didn’t even know where to stay,” said Marisol Aguero, 25, who was born and raised in Marshalltown. “We actually had a walkout from our school to protest those raids.”

Aguero said these early experiences shaped her politically. For her, in this election, where candidates stand on immigration reform will be a deciding factor.

Gabriela Domenzain, director of public engagement for Martin O’Malley, speaks to a group at El Portal Mexican Resturant on Sunday in Marshalltown, Iowa. Photograph: John Richard/The Guardian

After the union meeting in Marshalltown on Sunday afternoon, Aguero joined a handful of other young Latinos for lunch at a Mexican restaurant next door to hear where Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley stood on the issue.

Over chips and salsa, Gabriela Domenzain, a senior adviser to the O’Malley campaign and the former director of Hispanic media for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, switched between English and Spanish as she told the group why the Maryland governor was the only candidate the Latino community could trust on immigration.

“You cannot dispute that if it weren’t for Governor O’Malley, none of the other candidates would be where they are on immigration,” Domenzain said.

She reminded them that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had used the word “illegal” to describe immigrants who were living in the US without authorization, and said that Vermont senator Bernie Sanders had only recently developed an immigration platform.

Aguero said she had been leaning towards Sanders, but she added after the event that she had been persuaded by what Domenzain had to say. “Governor O’Malley has been very outspoken about issues of immigration and he’s set the bar high for the rest of the candidates,” she said.

Maria Gonzalez, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and a member of Immigrant Allies, was also at the lunch, and said that even though she cannot participate in the Iowa caucus, her voice will be heard.

Since the election cycle began, Gonzalez has been listening to what candidates have to say and sharing that information with her family and friends who can vote. Though she won’t tell them who to caucus for, she said, it’s hard to imagine anyone in her family supporting a Republican candidate this election cycle.

“My uncle and my sister, for example, can vote and they’re going to do whatever they can to protect their family,” she said. “And I don’t think the Republican party at this point is offering a plan for immigration reform. And especially by making comments that harass and insult us – labelling us as criminals, [Republicans] are not going to get the support for my family.”

On caucus night, Gonzalez said, she and her husband, Roberto, plan to bring 20 Latinos to their voting location.

She smiled: “We’re definitely going to add a little color to the caucus this year.”

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