Back in the fall, I wrote a short piece giving my initial reactions to the newly formed “Tequila Party” group, playing off of the popular “tea party”. Well, this weekend the group hosted a rally in Tuscon, Arizona, and it looks like the group’s latest push is to register Latino voters.
However, the name is still problematic mostly because tequila is often associated with intoxication and the group’s President Dee Dee Garcia Blase takes the stereotype a step further by announcing, “The siesta is over amigos. The fiesta begins today,” which some may construe as accusing Latinos of being lazy and only becoming interested in something if a “party” is involved. To add fuel to the naming controversy, Dee Dee Garcia Blase’s twitter profile has a picture of her holding a cigar in her mouth. Tequila, cigar = political movement?! Why represent yourself this way if you want to accomplish something serious?
While Hispanics report lower rates of alcohol use, substance abuse is still a problem in our communities, and for acculturated Latinos, binge drinking rates are slightly higher than average. In addition, a report published nearly ten years ago found that Latinos have the highest rate of death from cirrhosis of the liver, an illness related to alcohol abuse.
Perhaps the Tequila Party people are fine with their organization’s name because so much liquor advertising already targets the Latino community. The availability of alcohol and the associated advertising permeates the barrios. In a San Francisco based study, thirty-one percent of billboards in Latino neighborhoods advertised alcohol. Some may get the impression that the community places a heavy emphasis on alcohol consumption given the signage and industry investment in our communities. And I haven’t even mentioned the extent that the liquor industry sponsors our mainstream civil rights organizations; MALDEF (the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund) is headquartered in the Anheuser-Busch (beer) nonprofit center.
Another issue with the Tequila Party is the fact that the name could be construed as exclusionary. Lizeth Gomez, a political observer in Atlanta, explains, “The idea of choosing a Mexican drink to represent Latinos in the U.S. is exclusionary and culturally insensitive to Latinos in the US. Latinos in the US are a broad and diverse group, which certainly cannot be summed up or represented as ‘Tequila’.” Frances Martel of Mediaite explains, “The simplest way to begin is by pointing out that Tequila is an almost exclusively Mexican drink (due to Spanish imperialism, the Philippines had a hand in its development as well)– thus not ideal to represent the entire continent of South America, of which Mexico is not a part, nor any nation of the West Indies. Then there’s the generalization that Latin Americans are ‘a culture that likes humor,’ which whittles down the role of about 600 million people to court jesters, just standing around ready to make the rest of the world laugh.” Tequila drinking, happy go lucky, life of the party Latinos do not convey an earnestness in political participation and obviously “Mexicanizes” the group, which claims to have a broader objective.
And finally even though the Tequila Party claims to be non-partisan, some are going to question Dee Dee Garcia Blase’s motives, given her affiliation with the group “Somos Republicans”. It seems that the group would be better served with a spokesperson who isn’t registered with a party to better appear non-partisan.
Often, movements begin without names because they evolve. Leaders come and go, and issues change. I think that calling something “Tequila Party” in an attempt to register Latino voters and to create serious involvement is certainly troubling from the get-go, but time will tell if this group endures and what it accomplishes. For now, I wouldn’t take the Tequila Party too seriously.
