Latino and Anglo political portraits: lessons from intercultural field research

Authors report sharply contrasting portraits of Angle and Latino political values and behaviors, urging careful consideration of these differences in plans to include Latinos in civic life in the US, Rt ported data were colle cted during two and one half years of ethnographic field research which acc ompanied a domestic diversity program.(1) Developed in the Washington, DC m etro area, the Hispanic Leadership Project set out to prepare leaders from a recently arrived Latino immigrant population - primarily From El Salvador - to advocate and form political alliances on behalf of their people. With joint local government and private foundation support, project designers s ought alternatives to the marginalization and misrepresentation which are c ommon experiences of Latino peoples recently settled in the US. intentional ly inclusive, but accidentally ethnocentric, the Hispanic Leadership Progra m could not realize most of its: ambitious goals for social change, but pro ved to be a very heuristically powerful approach to set certain Angle and L atino cultural patterns in bold relief, particularly those related to polit ical self-expression and world view. Despite the specific features of its c ontext and participants, the project offers broader lessons to guide future research and practice, noted are guidelines for quantitative Follow-up stu dy and for subsequent efforts to foster Latino participation in politics. T he Hispanic Leadership Project and companion research are offered as a demo nstration of learning to be extracted from putative program failures and fr om use of qualitative methods in intercultural research. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.