Southwest Voter Registration Education Project

The Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) is a non-partisan Latino voter participation organization. Founded by social activist Willie Velazquez in 1974, the organization is the largest of its kind in the United States. The SVREP was originally established to safeguard the voting rights of Mexican Americans in the Southwest and ensure that they had the ability to meaningfully participate in the political process. Using the motto “su voto es su voz” (“your vote is your voice”), the SVREP advocated for those who were functionally disenfranchised and worked to increase the number of Latinos who were registered to vote. Over the course of its existence, the SVREP has sponsored more than two thousand voter registration drives, leading to the formal registration of an estimated 2.6 million Latino voters. In the twenty-first century, the SVREP continues to advocate on behalf of Latino voters and actively takes a stand against efforts to suppress the Latino vote.

Background

The establishment of the SVREP was necessitated by the United States’ long history of discrimination and disenfranchisement in relation to Mexican American and other Latino voters. Such issues first became a significant problem in the mid-nineteenth century because of changes in the geographic border between the United States and Mexico. As the American border shifted southward, many Mexicans suddenly found themselves living in a different country. This quickly led Mexican Americans to become the largest minority group throughout much of the Southwest. The emergence of Mexican Americans and other Latinos as a growing minority led to increasing anxiety among White citizens. In response, various measures aimed at disenfranchising Latino voters were put into place over time. Some of these measures, like poll taxes, were the same used to target African American voters. Others, such as the mandated use of English-only ballots, were specifically intended to make it difficult or even impossible for Latinos to participate in elections.

The first major step in securing Latino voting rights came with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This landmark legislation ensured that the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment were more rigorously enforced. Ostensibly, the Voting Rights Act was specifically devised and eventually enacted as a means of removing any state or local legal barriers preventing African Americans from exercising their right to vote. Beyond that, however, the Voting Rights Act also had the effect of securing voting rights for many other racial and ethnic minorities as well, including Latinos who were able to speak and understand English.

Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented a major step forward, it soon became clear that the law did not go far enough. In particular, it neglected the concerns of non-English-speaking Latino voters, many of whom were still left effectively disenfranchised due the lack of ballots and voter registration materials that they could easily understand. As a result, it was necessary for Latino civil rights advocates to continue pushing for voting rights reforms.

Overview

One of the activists who took up the fight for Latino voting rights was grassroots organizer Willie Velazquez, perhaps the most important such crusader of the 1970s. Velazquez began working as an assistant field director and fundraiser with the National Council of La Raza, a nonprofit Latino advocacy organization that later became known as UnidosUS. In that role, he organized a voting rights initiative called the Citizens’ Voter Research and Education Project in 1971. Two years later, Velazquez spun the Citizens’ Voter Research and Education Project off into an independent entity in the form of the SVREP. He subsequently served as the SVREP’s first executive director and later became its first president.

Velazquez intended to use the SVREP to empower the Latino community by mobilizing Latino voters and providing them with the tools and resources they needed to fully participate in the political process. Under his direction, the SVREP worked to accomplish its goals by sponsoring voter registration drives and filing lawsuits aimed at achieving political changes that would benefit Latino voters. His efforts through the SVREP soon led to the adoption of single member districts in many city and school district elections where at-large voting systems were previously in place. The SVREP also helped many prospective Latino leaders to get their names on the ballot as political candidates. Perhaps most importantly of all, the organization’s voter registration drives helped to enfranchise approximately 1.6 million additional Latinos nationwide.

Following Velazquez’s death in 1988, Andrew “Andy” Hernandez became the second SVREP president. Continuing his heralded predecessor’s crucial work, Hernandez led the SVREP in redoubling its redistricting efforts and in further developing the organization’s research department. He also oversaw the establishment of the Southwest Voter Research Institute (SVRI), a public policy analysis organization later renamed the William C. Velazquez Institute (WCVI). Under Hernandez’s leadership, Latino voter registration across the United States grew from 3.7 million to 4.2 million.

Antonio González succeeded Hernandez as SVREP president in 1994. The longest tenured leader in the organization’s history, González continued the effort to transform at-large election systems into single member districts by using the 2001 California Voting Rights Act to sue more than one hundred cities and school districts. He also oversaw the formation of the Latino Academy, a program that trains Latino candidates, campaign workers, and community organizers on how to run for elective office. Like Velazquez and Hernandez before him, González focused on growing the Latino vote as well, helping to increase the total number of registered Latino voters to 15.5 million while in office.

González served as SVREP president until his death in 2018, at which point he was posthumously succeeded by longtime SVREP activist Lydia Camarillo. She had become affiliated with SVREP in 1994 as the organization’s executive director before briefly leaving and subsequently returning in 2003 to take over as its vice president. Camarillo’s efforts with the SVREP helped encourage a continued boom in Latino voter registration. According to Pew Research Center, approximately 34.5 million Latinos were eligible to vote in 2022, more than at any other time in American history.

Bibliography

“1974: Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.” Library of Congress, 2023, guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/svrep. Accessed 21 June 2023.

Cruz, Caitlin. “The Forgotten History of How Latinos Earned the Right to Vote.” Splinter, 10 Oct. 2016, splinternews.com/the-forgotten-history-of-how-latinos-earned-the-right-t-1793862634. Accessed 21 June 2023.

Gamboa, Suzanne. “For Latinos, 1965 Voting Rights Act Impact Came a Decade Later.” NBC News, 6 Aug. 2015, www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latinos-1965-voting-rights-act-impact-came-decade-later-n404936. Accessed 21 June 2023.

Guadalupe, Patricia. “How Willie Velásquez Organized for Latino Voting Rights.” History.com, 16 May 2023, www.history.com/news/willie-velasquez-latino-voting-rights. Accessed 21 June 2023.

“History and Legacy of Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.” USO, 2023, www.svrep.org/history. Accessed 21 June 2023.

Martinez, Norma. “UTSA Special Collections Preserve Legacy of Latinx Voter Registration Efforts.” Texas Public Radio, 8 July 2020, www.tpr.org/community/2020-07-08/utsa-special-collections-preserve-legacy-of-latinx-voter-registration-efforts. Accessed 21 June 2023.

Palomo Acosta, Teresa. “Southwest Voter Registration Project.” Texas State Historical Association, 28 Sept. 2020, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/southwest-voter-registration-education-project. Accessed 21 June 2023.

Reichard, Raquel. “A Brief History of Latino Voting Rights Since the 1960s.” Remezcla, 22 Oct. 2018, remezcla.com/features/culture/latino-voting-rights-1960s. Accessed 21 June 2023.