Former President Barack Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Sen. Alex Padilla scheduled to speak at 5th annual conference.
By Wendy Fry & Alexandra Mendoza | San Diego Union-Tribune | SEP. 22, 2022 | Photo by Alexandra Mendoza
SAN DIEGO — The power, diversity and success of the Latino community will be on full display at San Diego’s annual L’Attitude conference, where everything from homeownership to higher education to purchasing power will be fodder for some of the biggest names in business and politics over the next four days.
Backers of the event hope to highlight how the success of Latinos is no longer a conversation solely about the Latino community — its fate is tied to that of the entire country.
The conversation comes as Democrats are losing ground with the Latino vote, possibly by underestimating how important economic policies are to Latino voters or by assuming every Latino feels the same about certain social issues, such as immigration.
Former President Barack Obama is headlining the event with an in-person interview on Sunday at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. The event also draws renowned personalities from various fields such as politics, entertainment, business and real estate. Tickets to attend are pricey, costing up to $850 for day-of registration.
A report measuring the economic impact of Latinos will be released Thursday during the opening day of the conference, now in its fifth year.
Roughly 62 million Latinos live in the U.S. — meaning 1 in 5 Americans is Latino — representing a significant and diverse community ethnically, racially, politically and economically.
Latinos play a key role in economic growth, as their buying power recently jumped to more than $1.9 trillion, according to a 2021 report from the University of Georgia. And Latinos are predicted to be 70 percent of all new homeowners between 2020 and 2040.
Specifically crucial to the U.S. economy will be Latino homeownership, said Laura Arce, senior vice president for economic initiatives for UnidosUS, who is attending L’Attitude. Arce is launching a 10-year initiative next year to increase Latino homeownership in partnership with the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, or NAHREP, a sponsor of the event.
Her initiative hopes to help address challenges such as a limited housing stock, the high cost of housing and rising interest rates.
“In helping to advance Latino homeownership, we’re not only helping Latino families and Latino communities, but we’re actually helping the country because that’s where we’re going to see the economic implications one way or the other — whether Latinos are able to close that homeownership gap or not,” she said.
The event is the initiative of entrepreneur Sol Trujillo and Gary Acosta, co-founder of the NAHREP.
Trujillo, who is an international business executive and has served as CEO of companies in the United States, the European Union and the Asia-Pacific region, said the idea came about when he was living abroad.
“I saw things happening in our country that didn’t make sense to me. They were un-American,” Trujillo said in an interview with the Union-Tribune, pointing to ideas such as building a border wall.
“Most of us, as Americans, we understand that we are all immigrants of some sort, other than the Native Americans. So, we had an issue here that makes no sense economically and ultimately, makes no sense politically, and for sure we needed to address it, but not in finger-pointing, name-calling, or anything like that, but to start gathering data,” said Trujillo.
So, a research report was produced. To publicize it, Trujillo and Acosta thought of building a platform in which Latinos would be the focus of an annual conversation: L’Attitude.
That research shows the Latino community is young. About 6 in10 Hispanics are millennials or younger, and a quarter are under the age of 18.
And many of those young people are becoming CEOs like never before — such as Liz Ramírez, the new CEO of the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, who said she’s attending the conference for the first time this year.
“Especially being a border community and a border city, Latinos are the heart of San Diego,” said Ramírez. “So, I think it’s so important to give space to Latino leadership. Together, we contribute so much to make the San Diego community a thriving community.”
Statewide, Hispanics became the largest racial or ethnic group in California, now totaling 39 percent in 2020. San Diego County gained 242,981 people —128,281 of them identified as Latino or Hispanic, while the county’s non-Hispanic White population fell to 45 percent in 2020, according to U.S. Census data.
The L’Attitude event also aims to highlight Latino wins in areas such as technology, entertainment and sports. Singer Gloria Estefan is scheduled to perform, and several concerts are set for the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park as part of the event. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the celebrated composer, playwright and actor, is also appearing — but to talk about entrepreneurship.
Despite the growth, Latinos still face numerous challenges. They are still underrepresented politically compared to the population nationwide, voter suppression efforts abound, and the rates of college attainment are low in California, according to Isidro Ortiz, a professor of Chicano and Chicana Studies at San Diego State University.
“In the context of COVID, where we have seen a decline in the number of students going to college, that’s a significant challenge, not just for Latinos, but for the economy of the state as a whole,” said Ortiz.
“That suggests there is a needed effort to promote college-going among Latinos, and that’s a campaign that really needs to cut across academia, business, political officials and so on — that’s critical,” he added.
The conference comes amid a nuanced shift in politics of Latinos moving to the right over the past several years, which the New York Times reported Wednesday as “a shrinking margin.” As a group, they still prefer Democrats, but not as much as before. The Times partially attributed that shift to economic issues that include jobs, taxes and the cost of living — factors poised to influence upcoming mid-term voting more than social issues.
Trujillo, one of the founders of L’Attitude, said Latinos are the most entrepreneurial cohort in the U.S. And in California, small business owners who grew up identifying with Democrats as the party of the working class no longer want to identify as such, according to the Times report.
Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of UC San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, attended the conference last year and said it has exploded in size and in profile by organizing Latinos who “are wonderful in their own areas, who are really becoming part of the American dream. They are fully integrated into U.S. society — they are American, by all means, and Latino.”
He described the conference as embodying a fun and young vibe.
“This is not the place to talk about problems. This is more the place to celebrate the future and to connect,” he added, describing the atmosphere of last year’s event.
Last year, 3,200 people attended. Event organizers say they expect twice as many this year.
