“When I reflect on the breadth and depth of what he has done for Latinos, it really makes him in my mind, and in the minds of so many others, the first Latino president,” said Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants and one of the administration’s highest-ranking Latinos.
Perez isn’t alone in that assessment. But many Latinos aren’t ready to go that far. But they’re starting to move. Obama’s approval rating shot up among Latinos since the executive action announcement, and the change in Cuba policy is a reminder of just how much politics have shifted: most older Cubans rage against lifting the embargo, while most younger Cubans track with the American public in supporting what Obama did—not to mention that Cubans now make up only 3.5 percent of the country’s Hispanic population. But polls show non-Cuban Hispanics support normalizing relations with Cuba by far greater margins…
Obama as the first Latino president? Díaz-Balart said no way. Obama’s Cuba shift will hurt him among Latinos, the congressman said, who will reject his backtracking on promises not to change the Cuba relationship without guarantees of human rights or freedom of labor unions and political parties.
“There will be a first Latino president, and one of the things that Latinos want—it’s an American thing, but a Latino thing—is you keep your word,” Díaz-Balart said. “If George Washington was the president who could not tell a lie, then history will record Obama as the president who could not say the truth.”
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