The Kind of Leadership Latinos Really Need

As the biggest minority in the United States, Latinos are reaching critical mass by becoming a powerful voting bloc, an indispensable purchasing power and a vibrant staple of American culture. Despite all these potentials, we can hardly identify a handful of leaders that understand our shortcomings and trumpet our ideals.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is what kind of leaders we need and/or want to lead our community in the national arena? An easy way to eliminate contenders is to look at the kind of leaders that we DO NOT want:

At the federal level: We don’t want representatives like Charles Rangel who awaits censure for being guilty of violating 11 counts of ethic rules “including failure to report assets and income and misusing his office to raise money for a public policy center to be named after him,” according to USA Today.

At the state level: The New York Daily News compared the organization lead by former state senator Pedro Espada with the most prominent mafia clans in New York City. He “looted more than $14 million from the government-funded nonprofit since 2005.”

Another shameful example is former state senator Hiram Monserrate. He was removed from office after being convicted of assault charges for hitting his girlfriend Karla Giraldo with a broken drinking glass. Mucho animal! However, this was just the tip of the iceberg. On October 19, he was charged with mail fraud and conspiracy for using taxpayer funds for his own benefits, just like Espada did.

At the local level: We cannot afford to have Latino officials like the former Hartford mayor Eddie A. Perez. He was the first Latino mayor ever elected in this Connecticut town running a campaign on accountability, but convicted afterwards on five felony charges of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison.

Is it too much to ask that we get honest public administrators and lawmakers who stay clear from graft? You can make a very decent living as a politician as it is. We need leaders who understand the true nature of being public servants and proudly represent our interests. Also, we need leaders who, once holding office, will not succumb to greed and hubris. However, some in the Latino blogosphere argue that having a single national leader is “strange” and “that just isn’t going to happen” as a response to a Pew poll that highlighted the lack of national Latino leaders. Others, including myself, politely disagree with them.

“The fact remains that Latinos do not have a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Cesar Chavez, and we could definitely use one,” writes Being Latino’s Cristina Villareal in her blog Are you the next Latino leader?. In addition, AOL’s PoliticsDaily.com correspondent Luisita Lopez Torregrosa hopes that “when the next Latino leadership survey comes around, Latinos will not only be able to name one national leader, but many.” We have plenty of leaders in our community to fit these roles and hopefully they’ll rise up to this unique occasion in history.

The original article was published on the Being Latino blog.