Can a Latino be a conservative?

Résumé du document

Anna Escobedo Cabral is treasurer of the United States of America, Carlos Gutierrez is secretary of Commerce and Alberto Gonzales is Unites States Attorney General. President George w. Bush's cabinet is, following Elena Rocha , "one of the most ethnically diverse administrations in the history of the country". As a matter of fact, seven out of fifteen of the "nation's highest posts" are held by ethnic minorities-three of which happen to be Latinos. It is of common acknowledgment that the Bush administration-Republican-practices policies considered to be of conservative inspiration . These policies are formulated, in part, by the Latinos who are members of the presidential cabinet. And to all appearances, they are also approved by a significant share of the Latino electorate.

Extraits

[...] These agreements concern a few key moral issues over which non-Latino liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans diverge. This attests of a probable incoherence between Latinos moral convictions and partisanship. Regardless of political filiations, Latinos are more likely than non- Latinos to approve the actions of their government. Nevertheless, a vast share of Latino electors—80% according to a survey by PEW (2004)—claim that the government should provide "health insurance for those without it". "Latino views on these matters largely supersede partisan loyalties" (LEAL). [...]

[...] On the other hand VRA did not have a positive effect on Latino electoral participation. In raw numbers, Latino voters almost tripled in the same period; but the share of Latinos over the total voters decreased. Can we understand the mediocre participation rates as a conservative electoral behaviour? Is it politically motivated? We could defend the hypothesis that low participation rates are a sign of a non-commitment to "conventional forms of political action". These forms, however, are not conventional to Latinos. [...]

[...] Is this definition applicable to Latino conservative behaviour? How can we measure conservatism? What is it that Latinos wish to conserve in the existing or traditional order? In order to answer to these questions we should consider that the Latino [4]ethnicity is not homogeneous. We will then focus on what the LNPS (Latino National Political Survey, 1989) delimited as a pertinent sample of the ethnicity: Mexicans, Puerto-Ricans and Cubans. We will ask ourselves, first, if electoral behaviour is an enough relevant indicator of conservatism. [...]

[...] Many Democratic Latino voters share with their Republican fellows a large range of conservative opinions or behaviours. II-Moral identification "The Latinos are Republicans, and they don't know it yet". This famous quote by Ronald Reagan illustrates the fact that a large amount of non-Republican Latinos share with Republicans a common point of view on key moral and even political issues. In reality, there is a great discontinuity between Latino electoral behaviour and their moral convictions—Republicans may therefore have very liberal conceptions concerning some issues, and Democrats very conservative opinions. [...]

[...] More particulary, it is inspired by Irving Kristol's Neoconservatism. Neocons, as they often call themselves, consider "patriotism [to be healthy sentiment to be encouraged by public institutions" (KRISTOL 1995). American Heritage Dictionnary. This definition will appear to be troubled when confronted to real-life behaviours Latino is a panethnic label; it comprises a large variety of national- origin groups. Moreover, it does not distinguish foreign-born from native- born, citizen from non-citizen etc. And in fact, Huntington is a neoconservative. [...]