Can Latinos Swing Arizona?
The New Yorker|August 1,2016

Fighting to vote in the Mississippi of the West.

Hector Tobar
Can Latinos Swing Arizona?

JOSE BARBOZA was up early on March 22nd, the day of the Presidential primary in Arizona. Barboza, a twenty-four-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was volunteering for Promise Arizona, a local group dedicated to turning out Latino voters. That morning, he canvassed in the barrios of Phoenix, at the foot of the dry slopes of South Mountain, making sure that the people he had registered showed up to vote. When I interviewed him in April, in the offices of Promise Arizona, he recalled the extraordinary excitement of the primary voters. In the end, a record six hundred thousand people cast ballots in the city and the rest of Maricopa County, twice the number in 2012.

Barboza is animated and solidly built, with close-cropped hair and black, rectangular-framed glasses. He was born in Guadalajara, and when he was four years old he came to the United States with his family. He went to public schools in Phoenix, and considers himself an American. His father is a construction worker, and his mother runs the family. As he put it, “There’s her, and there’s her.”

This story is from the August 1,2016 edition of The New Yorker.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the August 1,2016 edition of The New Yorker.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM THE NEW YORKERView All
NIGHTBRAWLER
The New Yorker

NIGHTBRAWLER

Imagine that you're a bouncer in a scuzzy small-town bar where some of the world's nastiest drunks go at one another with fists, knives, and broken beer bottles and that's on a good night.

time-read
6 mins  |
April 01, 2024
TRUTH OR DARE
The New Yorker

TRUTH OR DARE

A new production of Henrik Ibsen's \"An Enemy of the People.\"

time-read
5 mins  |
April 01, 2024
TWIN FEATS
The New Yorker

TWIN FEATS

The Escher Quartet's Bartók marathon; Igor Levit's symphonic piano recital.

time-read
5 mins  |
April 01, 2024
SKIN DEEP
The New Yorker

SKIN DEEP

The hit-or-miss body art of the Whitney Biennial.

time-read
5 mins  |
April 01, 2024
BALLPARKING IT
The New Yorker

BALLPARKING IT

When America's pastime was New York's.

time-read
10+ mins  |
April 01, 2024
AROUND AND AROUND
The New Yorker

AROUND AND AROUND

You say you want a revolution. But what counts as one, anyway?

time-read
10+ mins  |
April 01, 2024
ALLAH HAVE MERCY MOHAMMED NASEEHO ALI
The New Yorker

ALLAH HAVE MERCY MOHAMMED NASEEHO ALI

A huge hand grabbed the back of my neck as I stepped out of the Rex Cinema, and, instinctively.

time-read
10+ mins  |
April 01, 2024
ANNALS OF DESIGN - WATER WORLD
The New Yorker

ANNALS OF DESIGN - WATER WORLD

In a corner of the Rijksmuseum hangs a seventeenth-century cityscape by the Dutch Golden Age painter Gerrit Berckheyde, \"View of the Golden Bend in the Herengracht,\" which depicts the construction of Baroque mansions along one of Amsterdam's main canals.

time-read
10+ mins  |
April 01, 2024
TIME'S UP
The New Yorker

TIME'S UP

The Conservatives have ruled Britain for almost fourteen years. What have they done to the country?

time-read
10+ mins  |
April 01, 2024
THE ART OF MEMORY
The New Yorker

THE ART OF MEMORY

An ambitious new park attempts to tell the history of slavery through sculpture.

time-read
10+ mins  |
April 01, 2024