Pete White drives slowly through his old neighborhood in south Oklahoma City. The 78-year-old Oklahoma City councilman has lived in the area his entire life.
“This is the house I grew up in right here,” White said as he drove through a tree lined neighborhood of modest homes.
He pulled onto Southwest 25th Street in the business district of an area known as Capitol Hill. White pointed out the location of former businesses. Department stores, a doctor’s office, and pharmacies. All of them are long gone.
“This was a Langstons. Like the one in Stockyards,” White said as he pointed to a building. “A big Western store.”
Like many inner-city neighborhoods throughout the country, Capitol Hill declined. Retail competition from malls and big box stores drove small businesses out.
“The people moved to the suburbs. This failed about the same time downtown business failed,” White said.
Now, south Oklahoma City is in transition. Many neighborhoods have seen a huge influx of Hispanic immigrants over the decades, and that’s altered the area’s business makeup. Mexican restaurants and grocery stores dot the neighborhood. Attorneys, accountants and beauty salons that cater to Hispanic clients line the streets.
Santiago Arzate and his son, Marco, kick back with a glass of wine in their storefront property on Southwest 25th Street. Just one block away, a Mexican band entertains a large crowd on the street during Fiesta de lasAméricas, a full-day celebration of Latin American culture.
Both Santiago and Marco Arzate are businessmen. Santiago has owned several ventures over the past 25 years, and Marco owns his own lighting company. Marco says the commercial district is peaceful these days, but it was a rough place in the mid-90s when his dad opened his first Mexican restaurant.
“It was scary. There was prostitution. Gangs. Drugs. Graffiti. People tagging the walls. The police didn’t really run too much around here. They didn’t care to,” Marco said.
Santiago says one by one, more shops opened. Plywood came down off store windows. But the neighborhood still had a bad reputation. Sometimes, he still has to convince people to stop by.
“‘You need to come by and check it out,’” he would tell skeptics. “‘It’s nice and quiet and people don’t bother you.’”
Santiago was born in the United States but raised in Mexico, just south of the border. He ran away from home as a teen and ended up in Oklahoma City 45 years ago. Santiago says immigration is a big topic in his community, but so are education and security. He and Marco will both vote in November, but they say both presidential candidates are making it hard.
“You don’t know who to vote for,” they said in unison while laughing.
“That’s the sad part, right?” Marco said.
“That’s bad. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Santiago said.
Santiago never voted until the mid-1990s, when he opened his restaurant and became involved in the community. This year, he expects more Latinos in Oklahoma City to cast their ballot.
“A lot of Latinos are voting. They’re voting. A lot of them are registering. A lot of them are going to vote. No doubt about it,” Santiago said.
Voter turnout
The Pew Research Center estimates over 27 million Latinos are eligible to vote nationwide this November, and represent 12 percent of all eligible voters. But turnout among Latinos is traditionally low. Only 48 percent of eligible Latino voters cast a ballot in 2012.
University of Oklahoma political scientist Mackenzie Israel Trummel says this is because most people mirror the political behavior of their parents.
“A lot of us think of voting as a very low cost form of political participation, if you haven’t had that history in your family of voting, it can sort of a kind of mystery,” Israel Trummel said. “It’s difficult to learn how do you register, how do you find your polling place, how do you find out what’s on the ballot. So it can actually be more of a high-cost political act.”
Santiago Arzate didn’t learn about voting from his parents, and he didn’t vote until later in life. But his son, Marco, is a consistent voter.
“Seeing your parents vote sort of teaches the lesson that his is an important part of civic engagement and this is something you do when there’s an election happening,” Israel Trummel said.
Both Santiago and Marco are engaged in politics and their community. But there’s not a lot of political talk at the Arzate house.
“He don’t [sic] think like me. He’s my son, believe me, he don’t think me. We’re all different,” Santiago Arzate said. “So everybody’s got different points of view on everything.”
Santiago says keeping peace in the family is more important than winning a political argument. They would rather have fun together, drink some wine, and sing and dance.
Oklahoma Engaged is a collaborative series between KGOU and KOSU, with support from the Kirkpatrick Foundation.
