‘It’s too personal:’ Latino voters talk hurricane relief, immigration with Buttigieg
Crowded into a Mexican restaurant in Okatie Tuesday afternoon to meet Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, 13 Latino community leaders and activists questioned him about immigration issues, racism and Hurricane Maria relief, among other topics.
The meeting, a private community “roundtable” discussion at Las Palmas bar and grill, was part of the candidate’s fly-in, fly-out campaign events Tuesday ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 29 Democratic presidential primary.
Buttigieg said Latino communities are “the reason our community is growing, not shrinking.” He referred to his own town of South Bend, Indiana, where he serves as mayor, and to Beaufort County, which saw a threefold increase in Latino voters from 2016 to 2018, according to county Democratic party chair Mayra Rivera-Vásquez.
In a 45-minute discussion before Buttigieg left for Alabama (where he had an event scheduled just four hours later), the candidate took questions from community leaders about racism in the United States, the future of the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, or DACA, and Hurricane Maria relief.
“What are you going to do to address racism?” Carlos Chacon asked. “I didn’t think I’d see this [discrimination] in my lifetime.”
Chacon explained that discrimination toward minority groups is becoming more similar to “the time of [Adolf] Hitler,” when violence against Jewish people and other minorities was condoned by the government. The next president, he said, must do something to address hatred in the country.
Buttigieg said he would “establish a tone of a sense of belonging” in the U.S. if elected, and start by replacing current practices such as family separation and for-profit detention centers at the southern border.
“But you can’t just set up a neutral policy where there used to be a racist one,” he added. “These things don’t go away on their own.”
As Buttigieg and other Democratic candidates sweep through the Lowcountry, people like Fernando Soto, of Charleston, are showing up to express their worries.
“We obviously care about health care and education, but we can’t focus on those issues if we’re fearing for our safety,” the roundtable panelist told The Island Packet. South Carolina, where he grew up, is “not always so welcoming to the Latino community,” he said.
Soto said it’s refreshing to see renewed attention to Latino voters who don’t live in border states or states with historically higher Latino populations. He appreciated Buttigieg calling attention to Latino voters “in the shadows of the Deep South.”
He asked the candidate what he’ll do, after years of turmoil across the country over immigration, to protect DACA recipients like himself.
Buttigieg said he will make stabilizing DACA one of his top priorities in his first term. “When your peace of mind depends on this,” he said, “you don’t want something that can change in four years.”
Gustavo Gomez, a retired Marine who was born in Puerto Rico and lives in Beaufort County, said Democratic candidates aren’t talking enough about relief for Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017.
“A lot of people like myself served, and you feel the sting. You fight for freedom for other people in the world and then can’t do anything about where you’re from,” he said. “It’s too personal.”
Buttigieg said the delays in response to the storm in Puerto Rico are “shameful,” and said he hopes to secure more representation for the U.S. citizens who live there.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 4:40 AM.
