About 15 members of Gainesville’s Spanish-speaking community gathered Thursday night to share and learn more information about the voting process in the event “A Citizen’s Right to Know.”
Latina Women’s League partnered with the League of Women Voters of Alachua County and the Matheson Museum to make ballot information more accessible for the Hispanic community and create more confidence for residents exercising their vote.
Inspiration for the literacy event started when Veronik Rodrigues, the 44-year-old civic engagement coordinator with the Latina Women's League, attended an informational workshop with the League of Women Voters of Alachua County. She then felt an urge to share it with the city’s Spanish-speaking citizens, she said, especially during early voting season.
Even though Rodrigues can’t vote, she said she wanted to be part of the election process in other ways. She sought the importance of creating a Spanish informational meeting directed towards the Hispanic community, as she felt it’s an influential component of the elections.
“That they can feel part of it,” Rodrigues said. “They don’t have to translate every information that it comes to them.”
Rodrigues said she believes educating voters is not only important for people to make educated decisions but to also reach out to other people too.
“I might not be eligible to vote, but someone in my family is, my neighbors, my coworkers,” she said. "So that is the key, that when you are informed, you need to share.”
The speakers bureau chair of the League of Women Voters of Alachua County, 73-year-old Candy Birch, said she was amazed by how fast Rodrigues organized the event.
“All of a sudden, the next thing I know, she’s got the Matheson arranged,” Birch said, “It's just amazing that she was able to put it together.”
As part of the League of Women Voters of Alachua County, Birch organized a workshop about information and disinformation on Sept. 7, where Rodrigues asked if information was available in Spanish.
Birch said she discovered the League of Women Voters of Florida had content in Spanish. After she passed along the information to Rodrigues, Thursday’s literacy event was organized in less than three days.
“We have a lot of diversity, and we want that diversity of thought to show up in the voting record,” Birch said.
Rafael Ramirez Solorzano, a 47-year-old UF professor of Latin American Studies, attended the event as a special guest.
Solorzano emphasized the need to inform new voters about the election process, recalling how he and his sisters were once new voters. He believes there is too much disinformation targeting Spanish speaking communities who might not have adequate resources to get informed.
Even though Solorzano is a natural born citizen, he said he didn’t cast his first vote until his late 20s.
“I was young and no one was educating me, and I had to educate myself,” he said.
He is now passionate in bringing information to new voters so that they can represent their community, he said.
Lalita Garofalo, a 21-year-old UF health education student, is a new voter who attended the event. She said she will be the first one in her family to vote, as both her parents are immigrants.
Before the event, she was not sure about voting, she said. She felt like she wasn’t sure she was going to make a difference, she said, but after the event, she changed her decision.
“Learning more has inspired me to vote,” she said, “I am excited to tell my family back in Brazil that I voted.”
Garofalo said she wants to do more research before she casts her vote.
Jose Castillo, 45, resides in Gainesville and as part of a family tradition, he and his wife bring their children to the voting center to start educating them of civic responsibility from an early age.
“In the Dominican Republic, I learned to vote from my parents, and then I started voting,” he said in Spanish. “I’d like to pass that message on to my children,” he said.
He said he thinks it’s important his children appreciate what it means to have a right to vote and the importance of it as some immigrants don’t have the same opportunity to do so.
“Perhaps those people wish they could vote, and we get to do it for them,” Castillo said.
Contact Isabela Reinoso at ireinoso@alligator.org. Follow her on X @isareinosod.
