Over the course of her nearly 30-year career, award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa has covered everything from abuses at immigrant detention centers to Latino voters’ impact on the 2016 presidential election. Born in Mexico City, she came to the U.S. as a toddler in 1962 and was raised in Hyde Park. Today, as the longtime host and executive producer of NPR’s Latino USA, Hinojosa delves into every aspect of Latino news and culture. She has sometimes made headlines herself, as she did in October after confronting a member of Donald Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council on live television over his use of the term “illegals” to describe undocumented immigrants. Last year, through her company Futuro Media Group, she launched In the Thick, a new political podcast.
There’s some bigger issues, though, right? A quarter of Latino voters, more or less, said they were prepared to vote for a third party or a write-in candidate. These were numbers right before the election. And they’re pretty strong numbers. The Democrats’ and Republicans’ ears should be on fire right about now if there’s a quarter of Latino voters who are even playing with the idea of going to a third party or write-ins. That’s crazy. Insane. It could shift the entire conversation.
The real question now comes down to data. You have to look at what happens when you have a shrinkage of the immigrant population and of their engagement with the daily economy. People are saying they’re not leaving the house, not even to go shopping or to go buy things at the corner grocery. They’re not going out to dinner, to the movies. What does it look like when you have people who decide not to come [to the U.S.]? Is this going to make the U.S. economy strong, filled with growth? We’ll see. But obviously this is what a certain part of the electorate believed we needed to do.
Thursday May 11, 9:45 AM-1:30 PM, DePaul University, 2324 N. Fremont.
