When Hector Flores turned 18, he had to pay to vote.
More than 60 years later, he can’t remember the exact rate of the poll tax, maybe $2.50 or $2.75. But vivid in his mind is that the fee was roughly the price of a couple gallons of milk or a case of beer. In a town called Dilley, in Frio County, that was a serious dilemma for poor people, and it began his decades-long fight for equity.
Poll taxes were outlawed when the 24th amendment passed in 1964, though it wasn’t formally ratified by the Texas Legislature until 2009. In the meantime, Flores has been busy.
The former national president of LULAC, the country’s oldest non-partisan Latino civil rights organization, was first on the rolodex of a half dozen people who called him after news broke last month that agents from Attorney General Ken Paxton’s “Election Integrity Unit” had raided the homes of at least six people, including Latino community leaders, political consultants, and a candidate for elected office. Hearing their anguish on the other end of the line reminded Flores of the countless times he’s helped fight gerrymandering, police brutality, and disenfranchisement.
“At 82 there’s nothing I haven’t seen, okay, so that doesn’t scare me,” Flores told The Barbed Wire last week, where he took the call from Washington, D.C. for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Awards. Still, it felt all too familiar.
“I found it incredible that this could happen in this time and age. I thought that that was behind (us), you know, the history of Texas, the overt racism, overt intimidation, overt law enforcement.”
Flores lives in the Dallas area, about 290 miles away from San Antonio, where Paxton ordered several raids targeting Latino leaders in Texas on Aug. 20. Multiple search warrants — orchestrated under the veil of “undercover operations” for an “election integrity investigation” — took place in Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar Counties. The day after, Paxton said his office was looking into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote in violation of state and federal law.” But there is no real evidence that noncitizens vote in our elections — in fact, that claim itself has become a talking point that has emboldened extremist groups on the far right, ratcheting up the danger of election disruption and even political violence going into the 2024 election.
Flores is chairman of the Dallas County chapter of Tejano Democrats, one of the other organizations targeted in the raids.
“Calls started coming in, so I started to contact the LULAC leadership about how we should handle it and what we should do next,” Flores recalled.
The organization has said authorities seized some members’ laptops and cell phones, including the phone of Democratic candidate for the Texas House, Cecilia Castellano, who’s running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King in Uvalde. (Castellano has called the raids “nonsense” and cautioned people not to get “distracted” by them, according to the Texas Tribune.)
“It’s just heartbreaking to see this (voter intimidation) happen and people become scared. They’re not going to want to vote… they were terrified to go to a press conference, you know?”
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Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old abuelita, was among those targeted on Aug. 20.
It was 6 a.m. and the sun, like the rest of San Antonio, was still sleeping. The birds were barely beginning to ruffle their feathers when the violent knocks came at Martinez’s door.
“They scared the hell out of me,” Martinez told CBS News in tears, her gold hoops dancing back and forth as she shook her head. “It was embarrassing, humiliating, I was angry, it was horrible.”
Martinez said there were seven to eight armed officers in her home, as a large gold-framed image of Our Lady of Guadalupe — who is known to protect the oppressed and those with Mexican ancestors — looked on from the wall of her dining room.
The great-grandmother was forced to stand outside in her long, leopard-print nightgown. Neighbors looked on to see what was happening. She asked officers if she could get dressed before the search, and she said one told her sternly, “No, go outside!”
“I was at home (when I got the call about) one of my dear friends, Lidia. I’ve known her through LULAC and one of our programs. She’s always been a volunteer everywhere,” Flores said. “They don’t pay her to do a lot of this stuff. She concentrates on the elderly who need help in interpreting the forms and to be able to register to vote.”
Agents also “forcibly entered” the home of longtime Bexar County political consultant Manuel Medina, waking up his family — including his two young daughters — during a seven-hour search, according to court documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Medina works on Castellano’s campaign, and he told the Chronicle that he knows of at least 13 search warrants that have been executed over the last few months, specifically to people involved in Castellano’s House District 80 race. Republicans see that seat as their best potential state House flip in November, according to the Tribune.
Weeks after the raids, 16 attorneys general — including from New York, California, and Arizona —have called for a Department of Justice investigation. They’re joining LULAC and other Texas Democrats who’ve claimed Paxton is guilty of inciting fear and of voter intimidation. In their letter requesting a federal investigation, LULAC called the raids “illegal.”
“I thought that our (racist) history in Texas, that that was in the past,” Flores said. “(I thought) this (racism) was not going to continue as a way to stifle our vote, because we have a vote that’s very powerful.”
“When we vote, it makes a difference,” Flores continued. “We gotta be fighting all the time against these injustices. It seems like it doesn’t stop.”
At his age, Flores said he’ll remain involved in the fight for Latino civil rights, but he’s ready to pass the torch to the younger generation: “We’ve gotta make sure that young people stand tall and they go get their education and get involved.”
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Enter: the Poderistas.
“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed,” said the late César Chávez, a first-generation American, U.S. Navy veteran, and farm worker who spent his life fighting for Latino civil rights. “You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.”
Chávez’s civil rights work — coordinating voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, leading campaigns against racial and economic discrimination, spreading his now-ubiquitous motto, “Si se puede!” — was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, and it created a roadmap for many Latino organizations today. More than 65 years after he began organizing people on the ground, a group of 10 women, including actresses America Ferrera and Eva Longoria, formed an online community and nonprofit called Poderistas to celebrate Latina culture, connect the community, and build civic engagement.
“(Our goal is to) inspire this idea of a lifestyle of civic participation among Latinas, not just voting, but a lifestyle that includes voting,” said Charlotte Castillo, managing director of Poderistas.
On the heels of the accusations that Paxton’s raids constituted Latino voter intimidation, the organization hosted its first in-person national event on Sept. 20-21 in Dallas. It was exactly one month before early voting is set to begin on Oct. 21.
Coincidence? Castillo says no.
The summit “intentionally taking place in Texas during Latinx Heritage Month, serves as a powerful reminder of the vital contributions Latinas have made and continue to make in shaping the fabric of our society,” Castillo wrote in a statement to The Barbed Wire. “We are not just participants but pivotal architects in the fight for social justice, economic equality, and cultural vibrancy.”
Latinos in Texas make up the largest ethnic group in the state but still lag behind in political power. Castillo says the summit focus was primarily to give Latinas information on civic engagement, but also financial power, self-care, and confidence-building. It’s all part of their strategy to get Latinas more civically engaged.
“We believe that it is important to address a Latina’s life holistically,” Castillo explained. “Latinas are at the forefront of their families, they’re taking care (of everything), they’re entrepreneurs, they’re the mothers, the caregivers, the partners, the students, all the things, and that’s a lot of pressure. And we’re hearing that from our community, ‘That is a lot of pressure, we want to be there for all of it, but who’s supporting us?’”
Like Chávez, the nonprofit believes education is crucial for making sure the next generation of Texas Latina leaders are informed and ready.
“We’re not telling you who to vote for, we’re just kind of laying (voter education) out. We want to make sure that Latinas really show up,” Castillo said.
The group has divided the country into six areas they call “power squad” regions. Our state falls in the Texas/Midwest South region, along with Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri.
“We are actually boots on the ground with our community members here in our cities, asking them what (are) important issues for them,” Christina Olivarez, one of the Texas/Midwest South leaders, told The Barbed Wire last week.
Olivarez is a San Antonio-based entrepreneur and business coach who educates fellow Latinas on how to leverage economic power, visibility, self-care, and elections. She helps voters understand how local policies might impact their day to day lives.
While there is a push to make sure Latinas are informed come Oct. 21 when early voting in Texas begins, organizers say they’ll be here long after election day on Nov. 5. For Olivarez, this mission is in her blood. As a little girl growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley, her dad served as president of her school district’s board, and her uncle was in city leadership.
“Being plugged in to what is happening in our country as well as being involved in my community shapes the way for future generations,” Olivarez told The Barbed Wire in a text message. “We can leave this place a lot better for the future of our country and the ones who will live in it after we are all gone.”
The 33-year-old said she’s ready to grab the torch from forebears like Hector Flores and Lidia Martinez. Olivarez, along with other young Poderistas, are building community — organizing, just like Chávez — in the next battle for Latino civil rights.
(Editor’s note: An oral history of Flores’s life and career is documented in a University of North Texas Libraries special collection on the history of the civil rights movement. In addition to his civil rights work, Flores has worked as school administrator, police officer, and with the Department of Justice. He grew up in a town called Dilley in Frio County.)
