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Latinos and Rural America
Episode 2 of The Latino Newsletter podcast is out
Julio Ricardo Varela
August 09, 2024
In partnership with
Via Canva
Now that Joaquin Cotler and I dropped the second episode of The Latino Newsletter this week, I guess we have a Season 1.
Thanks to the initial support from the Latino Community Foundation, this week we invited Paolo Cremidis of the Outrun Coalition to the show and had one very strong discussion about U.S. Latino voters in rural communities.
Paolo is a dynamic voice who dropped so much knowledge about how Latinos are making their presence known in areas of the country where we think all rural voters are white non-Latinos.
The data has already proven that wrong over the years. I still remember the first time I read this headline from the USDA: “Hispanics Are the Fastest Growing Population in Rural America.“
There is also this 2022 data nugget from Pew:
Among counties with 1,000 Hispanics in 2020, the top 10 Hispanic growth rates ranged from 234% to 1,002%—at least 10 times the national growth rate of Hispanics. There are three in Louisiana, three in North Dakota, and one each in Alabama, Georgia, Michigan and South Dakota. North Dakota, the state with the fastest Hispanic population growth (148%), has the two fastest-growing counties: McKenzie (+1,002%) and Williams (+794%). They are among the top oil-producing counties in the country and were the two fastest-growing counties for total population between 2010 and 2020, in part due to job growth.
And this data from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute:
In the past 20 years, states where Latinos historically have not settled in large numbers all experienced substantial Latino population growth—for example, Kentucky (233% growth), South Carolina (207%), Alabama (202%), and Tennessee (199%; see Figure 2). Furthermore, Latino growth outpaced overall population growth in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. North Dakota and South Dakota experienced the fastest growth in the Latino population—333% and 265%, respectively, while total population growth in both states was about 20%. The Latino population still grew significantly in states that saw little growth or a decline in their overall population, such as West Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, and Rhode Island.
Still, how does this population growth transfer into actual political power? In a very lively 22-minute conversation, Paolo shares his insights. This was perhaps one of the most enjoyable interviews I have done in several years.
Paolo kept it real.
Take this one clip from the episode:
Chills.
As one follower already noted about Paolo’s words:
@LatNewsletter@paoloredtoblue Powerful, I came to game late, but I can certainly relate to the feeling.
— Rickysan502 (@Rickysan502)
4:20 PM • Aug 9, 2024
Here is the full episode.
You can subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible or iHeart Radio. If subscribing to another podcast is not your thing, we will share the new episode every Friday to our email subscribers and will post all episodes here at The Latino Newsletter.
Let me know what you think? It’s been nice to get back to this.
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What We’re Reading
LULAC Endorses Harris/Walz: From the fabulous Suzanne Gamboa of NBC News, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) announced a Friday endorsement of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket. According to Suzanne’s story, “The historic endorsement of the Democratic presidential ticket is the first for the civil rights group, which formed in 1929 to protect the rights of Americans of Mexican descent. LULAC leaders announced the endorsement first to NBC News and plan to join Harris and Walz at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday.”
“The Betrayal of American Border Policy” by Jack Herrera: Give it up to journalist Jack Herrera for his fantastic Thursday story in the New Yorker about Jesuit priest Father Brian Strassburger and his efforts to humanize migration in the middle of raw American politics.
Census Issues and Latinos: The team over at the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute published a new report about Latinos and the Census that made the Associated Press on Thursday. Written by Fernanda Figueroa of the AP, the new report “showed that the methods used by the U.S. Census and Office of Management and Budget to collect racial and ethnic data does not reflect the lived experiences of Latinos, especially Afro-Latinos. The report also provides some suggestions on how to generally improve collection of racial and ethnic data.”
Finally, Chi Chi Rodríguez passed away on Thursday. Let’s take a moment.
See you all next week. I truly appreciate you as a subscriber and supporter. Thank you!
Julio
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder and interim publisher of The Latino Newsletter.
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