--- title: Willie Velasquez and Early Attempts to Reach Latino Voters description: See an exclusive clip from a new PBS documentary about the life of Latino voting rights activist Willie Velasquez, founder of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project canonical: https://time.com/4513143/velasquez-pbs-documentary-hispanic-latino-voting-rights-activist/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-03T13:00:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T00:55:19.529Z article:section: History og:title: Willie Velasquez and Early Attempts to Reach Latino Voters og:description: See an exclusive clip from a new PBS documentary about the life of Latino voting rights activist Willie Velasquez og:url: https://time.com/4513143/velasquez-pbs-documentary-hispanic-latino-voting-rights-activist/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd67cc81ab107d720/6988a80eab6d7734086ab66f/photo-1larger-signature-photo-copy-photo-credit-george-velasquez.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1208 og:image:height: 680 og:image:alt: photo-1larger-signature-photo-copy-photo-credit-george-velasquez og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Willie Velasquez and Early Attempts to Reach Latino Voters twitter:description: See an exclusive clip from a new PBS documentary about the life of Latino voting rights activist Willie Velasquez twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd67cc81ab107d720/6988a80eab6d7734086ab66f/photo-1larger-signature-photo-copy-photo-credit-george-velasquez.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Exclusive Clip: The Ad That Helped Change How U.S. Politicians Courted Latino Voters > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Oct 3, 2016 1:00 PM UTC  George Velasquez  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Oct 3, 2016 1:00 PM UTC As both U.S. presidential candidates travel the country, hoping to inspire the 27 million eligible Hispanic voters to get to the polls, a new PBS documentary explores the life of one figure critical to mobilizing that base throughout the 1970s and 1980s: Willie Velasquez. The Mexican-American activist founded the [Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project](http://svrep.org/about%5Fsvrep.php) in 1974 in San Antonio, Tex., which ran more than a thousand voter registration drives aimed at Latino communities in 200 cities_._ “It’s similar to what happened in the South with blacks,” Velasquez once said, explaining the purpose of the group to [The Washington _Post_](https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26731895/) in 1977\. “The same thing is happening with Latinos except we’re a couple years behind.” This exclusive clip from [_Willie Velasquez_: _Your Vote Is Your Voice_](http://www.pbs.org/video/2365837935/) traces the evolution of U.S. politicians’ efforts to court these voters in major races. It argues the 1960 presidential campaigns for John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon both noticed that, due to demographic changes in the country, it would be a good idea to reach out to Latino voters—but that they didn’t yet know how to reach those communities. Velasquez helped achieve that “breakthrough” with a [1978 TV ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxu7d56EMhA) in the style of a _corrido_, a Mexican folk ballad, for Republican U.S. Senate candidate [John Tower](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,148220,00.html), said to have won his election with 37% of the Hispanic vote despite the accepted wisdom that those voters would go for the Democrat. [_Calling all history lovers: Get a book from our History collection with your paid subscription to TIME._](https://subscription.time.com/storefront/subscribe-to-time/link/1037942.html?iid=cm-bkpkgwebhistorylovers) Similarly, in the 1980 election, Velasquez’s efforts were credited with helping Ronald Reagan capture a record number of Hispanic votes, more than any Republican candidate in the previous 20 years, the Associated Press reported at the time. Throughout his career, he spoke out against systems that allowed residents of a city to vote for all open positions, rather than just those in their own districts, which he felt diminished the chance that Hispanic districts would be able to elect representatives who truly represented them. When he died suddenly of cancer at age 44, TIME wrote that he had “helped double the number of Latino voters and boost the number of Hispanic elected officials by 94% nationally.” In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Velasquez. 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