Two of ASU’s Hispanic students this month have had their faces etched in time.
TIME magazine, that is.
In TIME magazine’s latest front page article, Why the Latino Vote in Arizona Could Be Decisive in 2012, various Hispanic faces photographed by Marco Grob were displayed to show the significance of the Latino vote in the upcoming presidential election. Included in this line-up of Hispanic faces are two students from ASU, Alexis Trujillo and Vicente Filerio.
Trujillo, a journalism senior at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, was contacted by a Cronkite School professor, Andrew Leckey. Leckey, the Reynolds Chair in Business Journalism and President of the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, discovered that TIME, Inc. reporter Michael Scherer was interviewing people in downtown Phoenix for a story, and when Leckey was told what the article was concerning, he did not hesitate to inform current and prior Hispanic students. Trujillo accepted the offer and volunteered to be part of the article, unaware of the future of the interview and photos.
“Obviously none of us suspected photos would be used in this manner!” Leckey said in an email.
Filerio, a communications junior, meanwhile had been participating at a DREAM Act fundraiser when he was approached by Scherer. As a young Hispanic student interested in voting, he was interviewed. He was amazed that the photos made it to the cover of TIME magazine. Filerio, however, wanted to emphasize the importance these images represent as a message from the Latino community.
“Our parents didn’t have the courage or knowledge to stand up for what’s right for the Latino community,” Filerio said. “That’s why I am here; to do that for them.”
Trujillo and Filerio are both actively involved in politics. As a supporter of the unsuccessful DREAM Act, Filerio hasn’t lost hope for his community, remarking “I need to speak for those who can’t.”
Trujillo is focusing her studies at the Cronkite School in business journalism but has seen the political rise in the Latino community around her.
“To see the Latino community unfairly represented isn’t right,” Trujillo said.
This unfair representation helped start a movement to better represent Latino voters and spurred a door-to-door effort to elect Councilman Daniel Valenzuela, said Tony Valdovinos, a 21-year-old Phoenix native.
A Mexican immigrant himself, Valdovinos was enrolled at Gateway Community College when school board members had made the decision to raise tuition. Previously, students enrolled in fewer than six credits at GCC were able to pay in-state tuition. However, the decision to make all levels of enrollment adhere to in-state and out-of-state tuition equally seemed unfair to Valdovinos, who felt the school was prospering with money from those who can least afford tuition.
Valdovinos and several of his friends’ answer to this injustice as well as many other injustices was to create a group that would get someone elected who would represent their minority fairly, he said.
“In District 5, out of 150,000 residents, 67 percent are Latinos,” Valdovinos said. “The district’s voice was not represented the way it was in reality.”
It wasn’t easy, Valdovinos said, going door-to-door in “Phoenix’s 110-degree heat,” but the group succeeded in their goal, encouraging enough voters to elect Valenzuela. It was then that their efforts gained recognition, and a newly dubbed “Team Awesome” was established as a moving force in Arizona politics.
Leckey, who teaches the future of business journalism course at the Cronkite School, believes in the future of Latino journalists, as many accompany him to China through a study abroad program during the summer.
“The Hispanic community has a dramatic impact on the ASU Cronkite School and today’s Hispanic students will become even more important as they take their places in global leadership positions in journalism,” Leckey said via email. “This does not just make ASU unique; it makes it better because it helps to give full voice to a group often underrepresented among those who report the news. Each year included among the Cronkite students I take to climb The Great Wall of China are some Hispanic students who are first-generation Americans. This dramatizes the global power of journalism and one’s ability to cross cultures yet retain the dignity and power of one’s own heritage.”
Contact the reporter at dmzayas@asu.edu
