Latinos await 50th anniversary of Kennedy assassination

voxxiBy Tony Castro, Voxxi

In the wake of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Latinos in America are gearing up for what to many of them is an even bigger golden anniversary commemoration — President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

The celebration of the historic March on Washington for civil rights has sparked interest among many Latinos in the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, a man whom many regard as having given impetus to Latino political power in the country.

In 1960, Viva Kennedy clubs, aimed at getting Latinos to the polls, were the first political awakening for American Hispanics, who made up only 3.2 percent of the national population at the time.

The Kennedy assassination took place in November 1963.

President Kennedy moments before the assassination. (Dallas Morning News/Walt Cisco)

“I really wanted him to be president,” says Angel Zavala, 91, whose living room in Taylor, Tex., is home to one of the family’s most prized possessions — a framed invitation to Kennedy’s inaugural ball, on Jan. 20, 1961.

Kennedy had invited him to the inauguration festivities and sent him a thank-you note for his campaign work, which included organizing veterans, helping Latinos pay poll taxes that were then required in order to vote, and getting voters to the polls.

“I liked his wife,” says Zavala, “and I liked him because he was a war veteran, and so am I.”

Zavala’s only regret from that time is that he wasn’t able to attend the inauguration or the inaugural ball.

However, Zavala typified many of the country’s Latinos then, who were enamored by the Kennedys – Latinos who became collectors of JFK memorabilia, whose homes often boasted commemorative plates and photographs and who came to regard Kennedy as one of their own.

Appealing to Latinos

The First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, spoke Spanish, and in 1960 had recorded a Spanish ad for the campaign, reminding Latinos to vote, ending her message with words that were reminiscent of Mexican-Americans’ own campaign cry, “Que viva Kennedy!”

The always glamorous Mrs. Kennedy usually wore French couture but it may have been seeing photographs of her wearing traditional Spanish mantillas to mass that counted most with Latinos. And, yes, the Kennedys were Roman Catholics, as were most Hispanics of that era.

 

“This generation had a connection with Catholicism,” says Marc Rodriguez, director of the Civil Rights Heritage Center at Indiana University South Bend.

“I’m sure that some of [the Kennedy] efforts were effective because they went through churches, and priests were hammering away at the pulpit saying voting for Kennedy was helping a Catholic take office in the White House.”

No Roman Catholic had ever been elected president, and the more that Kennedy’s Catholicism became an issue in that campaign, the more it solidified his standing with Hispanics.

“Every time that he got put down for being a Catholic this made points with the Mexicans, who are all Catholics,” said farm labor leader Cesar Chavez. “[Latinos] looked at him as sort of a minority kind of person.”

Hispanics were also aware that Kennedy’s ancestors had faced discrimination for being Irish, and they figured he could appreciate the racism many Latinos had experienced.

“Kennedy was from an ethnic group, so he understood the politics of relationships,” says Brigham Young University history professor Ignacio Garcia, author of the book “Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot.”

“It translated well with Mexican-Americans, and they felt they had a relationship with him. They liked him.”

The night before the Kennedy assassination, a moment with Latinos

There was even a Latino connection in Kennedy’s ill-fated campaign trip to Texas in late November 1963.

On Nov. 21, while in Houston, Kennedy paid a surprise quick visit to a gala being held at the Rice Hotel Ballroom by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), then the leading Latino civil rights group in the country.

“The Secret Service told us that he may stop by, but not to advertise it because it wasn’t part of his official schedule,” recalls then LULAC official Alexander Arroyos. “We could spread it through word-of-mouth. No one believed us.”

When Kennedy showed up, it marked what historians believe is the first appearance by a president at such Latino event, officially acknowledging Hispanics as an important voting bloc.

 

Among those greeting Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson and their wives at the door that evening was Macario Garcia, who had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his service during World War II.

Kennedy made remarks about foreign policy in Latin America and the importance of LULAC, but it had been the First Lady who stole the thunder, telling the crowd in Spanish that Latinos had a long history in Texas.

The crowd broke into chants of “Viva Kennedy!”

The next day President Kennedy was dead.

But Hispanics, both then and later, retained the memories that had taken them and the late young president to that point in history.

“The martyrdom,” says author Ignacio Garcia, “solidified all those images.”

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Tony Castro is the author of the newly-released “The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations,” as well as of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son.”

[Photo by U.S. Embassy New Delhi]

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read