Opinion: How President Obama Can Reach Hispanics

By Galina Espinoza
Published January 21, 2011

Latina Magazine Editorial Director Galina Espinoza

When President Obama takes to the podium next week and delivers his annual State of the Union address, he will be trying to rally a country that, politically, needs Latinos more than ever before.

According to an analysis of 2010 U.S. Census data conducted earlier this month by the Pew Hispanic Center, a record 20.1 million of the 48.4 million Hispanics in this country are now eligible to vote. And our numbers are growing faster in the states (such as Florida and Nevada) that, based on the Census, will be getting additional seats in Congress.

And yet, as I have written in the past, I feel that the President has done little to reach out directly to Latinos—failing, for example, to include as us part of his big “Education Nationâ€