Popular DJ Takes National Registration Drive to Latino Voters

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

> Popular DJ takes registration drive to Latino voters
> 'El Cucuy' starts national tour in San Jose, 
> broadcasting from a bus to millions of fans
> Tyche Hendricks, San Francisco Chronicle Staff 
> Writer <mailto:thendricks@sfchronicle.com>
> Tuesday, August 1, 2006
>
>
> "Today we march, tomorrow we vote!" marchers 
> shouted in the immigrant rights rallies that 
> filled the streets of U.S. cities this spring.
> Trying to motivate Latinos to flex their 
> political muscle, popular Spanish-language DJ 
> Renán Almendárez Coello, known to his estimated 
> 35 million listeners as El Cucuy or "the 
> boogeyman," began a national voter registration drive Monday in San Jose.
> San Jose was the first stop on Almendárez's 
> two-week, 10-city bus tour, which he also hopes 
> will influence the debate on immigration reform and a host of other issues.
> Almendárez broadcast his daily morning talk 
> show, "El Cucuy de la Mañana," live from the 
> parking lot of Mi Pueblo Market, a bustling 
> full-service grocery store specializing in 
> Mexican foods. The show is syndicated in 36 
> cities; the road show will hit 11 of them and 
> wind up in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11.
> Through the Votos por America campaign, 
> Almendárez hopes to get 1 million new voters 
> registered before November's election. That's a 
> big number but a fraction of the more than 7 
> million Latino citizens who are eligible to vote but have not registered.
> The Latino electorate has grown in recent years 
> -- with a record 7.6 million Latinos casting 
> ballots nationally in November 2004, accounting 
> for 6 percent of all votes. But Latinos remain 
> under-represented politically because many Latin 
> American immigrants are not citizens and many 
> U.S.-born Latinos are not yet adults.
> "We're building a movement," said Almendárez, 
> after broadcasting for six hours from the back 
> of the tour bus. "The marches made us visible, 
> but by voting we can help decide the destiny of 
> this country. If we vote, politicians will heed us."
> Almendárez, 51, whose folksy show is best known 
> for its bawdy humor, was one of several popular 
> Los Angeles-based locutores, or disc jockeys, 
> who drew more than a half-million people to 
> marches in that city on both March 25 and May 1. 
> He encouraged protesters to show their unity by 
> wearing white T-shirts and their civic spirit by carrying American flags.
> El Cucuy has long punctuated his goofy 
> drive-time entertainment with avuncular advice 
> for the lovelorn and earnest charity drives that 
> have raised millions of dollars for victims of 
> natural disasters. But the show took a more 
> political turn in December when Almendárez, on a 
> trip to Indonesia to deliver tsunami aid, 
> learned that the U.S. House of Representatives 
> had just passed a bill to build a wall along the 
> Mexican border and criminalize illegal immigration.
> The bill's punitive approach hit Almendárez in 
> the gut, said Charo Martínez, who contributes to 
> the show from KRZZ-FM, the San Francisco station that carries it.
> "I can tell you, people are now more interested 
> in political issues and social issues," she 
> said. "They want more than just jokes and songs. 
> We have community leaders and political leaders on every single week."
> Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who spoke on the show 
> Monday from Mi Pueblo Market, told listeners: 
> "An election is the only time when the voice of 
> the poor is equal to the voice of the rich. 
> Voting is essential for our democracy."
> The primary goal of the campaign is "a dignified 
> immigration reform" that respects the 
> contributions to the United States by the 
> country's estimated 12 million illegal 
> immigrants and creates a path to legal residence 
> and eventual citizenship for them. But the 
> Honduran-born Almendárez also wants his 
> immigrant listeners to play a more integral role in their new country.
> Penny Raile, director of the El Cucuy 
> Foundation, which is helping lead the voter 
> drive, acknowledged that the two-week bus tour 
> won't be able to register a million voters at 11 
> parking lot events. In addition, her group is 
> coordinating with the We Are America alliance, 
> which includes national immigrant rights groups 
> and service employees' unions involved in Latino 
> voter registration efforts. And Almendárez will 
> keep plugging voter participation on his show.
>
> Political leaders who turned out Monday 
> emphasized that California alone has 4 million 
> Latino citizens who are not yet registered 
> voters, and El Cucuy is uniquely positioned to reach them.
> "In California, in most Latino households, 
> someone speaks Spanish," said Assemblyman Joe 
> Coto, D-San Jose. "The youngsters born in this 
> country are citizens and getting to voting age. 
> He is able to connect with their parents and 
> that translates to the whole family."
> On the radio Monday, Almendárez chatted with 
> Jovita Solís, a citizenship educator at 
> Oakland's Spanish-Speaking Citizens' Foundation 
> and encouraged listeners, "If you're a citizen, 
> register to vote! If not, find out how to become a citizen!"
> In typical El Cucuy fashion, the interview was 
> peppered with laughter and banter about infidelity and women's breasts.
> In the parking lot outside, listeners began 
> arriving before dawn to pick up voter 
> registration forms on the way to work. By 
> mid-morning, as shoppers passed in and out of 
> the supermarket, a couple of hundred El Cucuy 
> fans waited in the sun to catch a glimpse of 
> Almendárez -- and find out about naturalizing and voting.
> Barbara Friend, 37, an Alameda cashier, picked 
> up a booklet on citizenship and said she was 
> eager for the day when she could vote.
> "I listen to El Cucuy every morning, and he 
> motivated me to come," said Friend, who was born 
> in Mexico but has been a permanent U.S. resident 
> for seven years. "I want to help those who don't have their papers yet."
> Inside the tour bus, state Sen. Gil Cedillo, 
> D-Los Angeles, stretched his legs after finishing an on-air interview.
> "El Cucuy is one of the major cultural leaders, 
> one of the moral leaders in our community," he 
> said. "He has a very personal relationship with 
> his audience, so when he says, 'We should 
> register to vote, and we're going to do this 
> together,' people respond. I've seen him raise 
> over $1 million in nickels and dimes and quarters."