Arkansas town where majority of residents Hispanic still put off by Trump

DE QUEEN -- On the day he announced his candidacy for president, Donald Trump said Mexicans who come to the United States are inferior to the best and brightest who remain south of the border.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

More than a year later, people in De Queen haven't forgotten the Republican businessman's words that day.

"I think it's really unfair," Maria Rodriguez, 32, said in Spanish as she tended the counter at Panaderia La Colmena (The Beehive Bakery) on a hot August afternoon.

The Sevier County seat, population 6,723, nearly straddles the Oklahoma state line and is home to a Pilgrim's Pride poultry processing plant.

It is majority Hispanic, the only Arkansas town of its size where Hispanic people are that prevalent.

In the United States, "Mexicans do all the work, all the hard work, but Trump can't see that," said Rodriguez, a Mexican citizen, as her 4-year-old American-born son, Eric, stood beside her.

Trump, she said, is "an enemy of Mexicans."

The Republican nominee has rejected that assessment, telling reporters early in his campaign: "Latinos love Trump, and I love them."

Trump trails among Hispanic voters in a long series of polls.

At El Paisano (The Countryman), a De Queen taco stand across from the county courthouse, Gilberto Villalobos, a Mexican immigrant, said he'll be rooting for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in November.

"I think Hillary's going to win because she has the best ideas for the country," the 55-year-old chicken hatchery employee said. "Donald Trump seems like a racist. He doesn't like Mexicans, he doesn't like people from the Middle East. He doesn't think about anybody but himself. He isn't watching out for the country."

With the number of Hispanics in the U.S. soaring, Democrats are hoping that opposition to Trump will spark a record-breaking Hispanic voter turnout this fall.

But they are also looking beyond November, increasingly convinced that America's growing Hispanic population will reshape the electoral map for decades to come.

Of the nation's 309.3 million residents, 50.5 million were Hispanics, according to the 2010 U.S. census. That's more than triple the 14.6 million Hispanics counted in 1980. Roughly 63 percent trace their roots to Mexico.

The total Hispanic population in the U.S. is expected to surpass 100 million by 2050.

Nationwide, 41.6 percent of Hispanics are qualified to cast U.S. ballots, according to the Pew Research Center, which analyzed 2014 data.

Top Democrats are aware of the demographic trends.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said in Spanish during a recent visit to Little Rock: "The Hispanic community is very important for our party."

Also, the U.S. senator from Virginia listed several states where Hispanics make up a large share of the population -- 47 percent in New Mexico; 38 percent in California; 30 percent in Arizona; and 27 percent in Nevada.

And he noted the increasing Hispanic influence in Virginia, where Hispanics make up 7.9 percent of the population, according to 2010 U.S. census figures.

"In Arkansas, too," he said. "It's growing every day."

In 1990, Hispanics were hard to find in Arkansas. They numbered just 19,876 in the 1990 U.S. census. But that figure jumped to 86,866 in 2000 and to 186,050 in 2010. In 1990, Hispanics made up just 0.8 percent of the population. By 2010, they accounted for 6.4 percent of the state's 2.9 million residents.

Many of the Hispanics in the state located in Northwest Arkansas, although growth has also been sharp in Pulaski County.

The Pew Research Center estimated that Hispanics now make up 6.9 percent of the Arkansas population, but only 29 percent of them -- 60,000 -- are old enough and eligible to vote, it found. By comparison, almost 2.2 million people in Arkansas are eligible to vote. About 1 million Arkansans cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election.

Activists in Arkansas are working to increase the number of Hispanic voters by helping adults to qualify for citizenship and registering others to vote as soon as they turn 18.

Mario Zuniga, whose family owns a Mexican grocery store in De Queen, said he is one of the 60,000 eligible to vote.

He said he likes that Trump is a businessman but is bothered by the candidate's rhetoric.

"Some of the stuff he says, it ain't right, you know," he said.

The 29-year-old, who grew up in De Queen, said he's still studying his Election Day options but it's hard to imagine himself voting for Trump. "We're looking for something to better the country, not something that's going to make it worse," he said.

A few blocks away, at La Carniceria Nueva (The New Butcher's Shop), Israel Ortiz said he's hoping for a president who can get the economy growing again.

The 49-year-old Mexican citizen said he's heard Trump's comments about Mexicans in the U.S., and Ortiz cautioned against using too broad a brush when describing newcomers.

"Sometimes we Mexicans, as we say in Mexico, 'bite the hand that feeds us.' Some of us behave badly. Others don't," he said, shortly before preparing chorizo sausage.

Plenty of Arkansas immigrants "work hard. They're honorable, decent, dependable family people with kids who go to college," he said.

His son, Javier, has a degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The 25-year-old honors graduate hopes to become a doctor some day.

If the presidential candidates want to help De Queen, Ortiz said he knows what the community needs.

"More jobs. More work," he said. "Build one more factory, and this will be a happy town."

A Section on 09/01/2016