Latino protesters picket Gov. Martinez over drivers-license spat
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) speaks before the Hispanic Leadership Network’s Southwest conference (Photo by Jordan Fabian)
By JORDAN FABIAN
Channel: Politics
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A group of protesters Friday night picketed an event that hosted New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) over her effort to strip drivers licenses from undocumented immigrants
The cadre of 40 to 50 protesters, the vast majority of whom were young Latinos and identified themselves as DREAM Act students, gathered outside the courtyard at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Albuquerque where Martinez addressed a Latino Republican group and waited until she was done with her 20-minute speech.
Then, demonstrators erupted into chants against the governor and her policies. One young man held up a wicker basket while many of the demonstrators tossed in their drivers licenses.
“Governor, here are our licenses!” the man yelled.
Martinez was speaking before a gathering of the Hispanic Leadership Network, a conservative group with the goal of promoting center-right policies to Latinos. As the nation’s first Latina governor, Martinez has become a rising star in the GOP and is mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate.
As the protests grew louder, members of the audience seated near the protesters began to verbally clash with them.
After the protesters chanted “U.S.A! U.S.A!”, some audience members responded with their own chants of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” The demonstrators countered, shouting “We are U.S.A!”
The demonstration came after Martinez delivered an unequivocal defense to the hundreds gathered in the audience of two initiatives that have irked left-leaning Latino activists in New Mexico: her desire to repeal a state law allowing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants and another that would end so-called “social promotion,” or allowing students achieving below grade-level to advance in public schools.
Martinez, whose state is one of only three that grants drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, said that the current law poses a security risk and opens the state government up to fraud. She said that people have come from as far as China and Poland to get licenses, just to re-sell them on the black market in other states.
“Seventy-four percent of New Mexicans want that law repealed. I was elected to do New Mexicans’ work and I will do it,” she said to cheers from the crowd of Latino Republicans.
She also defended her bill, which is stalled in the state legislature, that would hold back under-performing public school children, saying that it would promote accountability.
“I will come session after session, making sure that our education reform is bold and that we don’t continue to do the same thing and expect a different result, which is constantly throwing more and more money at the problem thinking that we’ll get better at it,” she said.
But the demonstrators said that Martinez’s policies are unfair to the children of undocumented immigrants who were born in the United States and their families.
“We’re hoping that New Mexicans will keep our elected officials accountable and letting them know that New Mexicans really [oppose her policies],” said Emma Sandoval, 24, who said she was an Albuquerque resident.
Sandoval said she was with the Southwestern Organizing Project, a New Mexico Latino civil-rights group which organized the demonstration.
Despite her status at the first Latina governor in the U.S., Martinez has faced tough opposition from liberal Latino groups in her own state, and nationally, who say her conservative agenda is out of step with the Latino priorities. She failed to capture a majority of Latino voters in her state in 2010 against a non-Latino Democratic opponent.
But Martinez roundly rejected the notion she’s out of step during her speech.
“New Mexicans are independent thinkers. They are willing to cross party lines if they think the same as you do, if they have the same values,” she said. “You have to have sincere conversations, not the rhetoric.”
Still, Martinez has faced heightened criticism over her drivers license effort after she revealed to Univision’s New Mexico affiliate KLUZ-TV that her paternal grandparents came to the United States without proper documentation.
“Her [grand]parents are also undocumented as [ours are],” said one of the protesters named Claudia Diaz, who identified herself as a 15-year-old New Mexico native and the daughter of undocumented immigrants. “And, I mean, speaking for everybody who lives here … she shouldn’t be doing that.”
The debate over drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants has been one of the most contentious issues of Martinez’s nascent governorship.
Martinez’s administration has requested that 10,000 foreign nationals with New Mexico drivers licenses prove their residency in the state. Latino groups have protested the move as an invasion of privacy and have accused the governor’s administration of overstating how many fraudulent drivers license cases exist.
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