Despite Her Age, Margarita Montañez is Still Getting Out the Vote

Margarita Montañez registered to vote the very day she became a citizen in 1997. She has voted, and has registered others to vote, for a quarter century. Her 73 years are no obstacle.

“I really like to vote,” she says. “It makes me very happy. I vote in my community elections and I also help other candidates in other communities because I’m extremely interested in people registering to vote.”

In this election, she is also motivated by her horror of President Trump’s immigration policies, especially the separation of children from their mothers.

“This is a trauma from which they will suffer greatly,” she says. “It makes me sad to see children ripped from their parents’ arms.”

Margarita suffered through a short separation from her 9-month-old baby when she first arrived in the United States from her native Veracruz, on February 20, 1970. She remembers the date because it was her birthday. She crossed the border with her husband, but had to leave her son with family. A few days of separation felt like an eternity to her. She knows the despair of these mothers.

“It saddens me to see that these children are locked up, as if they were animals, without protection, medicine, schooling or preparation for the future,” she said. “It’s a great injustice.”

Margarita and her family have prospered: her husband has a small business as an electrical contractor, and her six children have gone to university. But behind that success is struggle. She remembers how she sold tomatoes and watermelon in the street to make ends meet while her husband studied to get his professional license.

And she knows there are many like her in her community. So from the beginning she got involved, first through her church and, during the last five years, through CHIRLA. The idea that a neighbor of hers might qualify to vote, but won’t do it, is past her understanding.

“How are we going to go see the governor and the other politicians if we don’t vote and we do not have the voice to say ‘I voted for you to represent us’?” she asks. She sets the example, for her children and other young people, “so that they, too, are good citizens, and when they are of age, they also participate.”

For this election, Margarita has made a plan. She wants to vote by mail, as she has in previous elections,

“so I can take my time and don’t have to rush.” She says that now that this option is being promoted vigorously, Latinos have no excuses to get out of voting.

What would Margarita like for this election? She’d love to see her family and neighbors all wearing their “I Voted” stickers. Even more, she’d like to see news reports saying that

“we Latinos made history and … in California, we Latinos voted in greater numbers than in past years.”