Political pundits loved to use the phrase “the sleeping giant” when describing the Latino vote or our potential political power. Every election cycle, we heard that the giant was finally waking up. I have always disliked that term. It is a lazy metaphor that implies we were asleep for generations. It suggests that our lack of political representation was due to apathy or laziness rather than systemic exclusion.
The truth is that we were never sleeping. We were working.
I witnessed this work firsthand growing up in the Rio Grande Valley. We were organizing farmworkers in the fields. We were building families and communities in the face of segregation. We were surviving a system designed to keep us on the margins of the economy away from the ballot box.
When I helped organize the Raza Unida Party in South Texas during the early 1970s, I did not see a community waking up from a slumber. I saw families who were tired of being told to wait. I saw migrant workers who had traveled the country and seen how others lived, realizing they deserved the same dignity. The giant was not asleep. It was being held down by poll taxes, gerrymandering, and intimidation.
The history of South Texas proves that we have always been awake. From the fearless journalism of the early 20th century to the student walkouts of 1968, the resistance has been continuous. When those students walked at Edcouch-Elsa High School, they were not acting on a sudden whim. They were standing on the shoulders of parents and grandparents and activists who had quietly endured and prepared them for that moment.
We must reject the idea that we are just now arriving at the table. We have been here, building the table, for a very long time.
