Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Father on the Latino Vote and a Life of Activism

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, our next guest has devoted decades to giving Latino communities a voice in U.S. politics, but many now know him as the father of “Hamilton” creator Lin Manuel Miranda. Now, Luis Miranda Jr. is out with a new memoir, “Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit that is Transforming America,” which chronicles his journey from young activist in Puerto Rico to influential Democratic adviser in New York City. And he joins Michel Martin to look back at a lifetime of advocacy at a time when the Latino vote will play a key role in the upcoming U.S. election.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Luis Miranda Jr., thank you so much for speaking with us.

LUIS MIRANDA JR., AUTHOR, “RELENTLESS”: Thank you very much for having me here.

MARTIN: As your son, Lin Manuel says in the forward, this book does a lot of things. I mean, it’s a memoir. It’s a story of the political sort of evolution of Latino power in New York, particularly. And it’s also kind of a — I don’t know what to say, like a manifesto about how leaders should be thinking about Latino voters in the current moment. It does a lot of things. What made you want to write this book at this time.

MIRANDA JR.: When I started, it was supposed to be the manifesto part. I was getting increasingly pissed off that I kept reading all of these new experts of Latino politics that I’ve never heard of in my entire life. And I have been in this space for 45 years. I know a lot of people in this space, but they had read a couple of polls and all of a sudden, they were experts. And I kept complaining to my friends. And my friend said, why, rather than complaining, put them in paper you’re 45 years of experience in this area. So, I started doing that. And as I did that, my family became more and more of a protagonist in the story of politics because a lot of what we do, we do it together as a family. And then the autobiographical part became an important component of it.

MARTIN: You came to the mainland from Puerto Rico when you were only 19 years old. Why did you choose to go to the mainland? And how did you get interested in politics?

MIRANDA JR.: I was always fascinated by New York. It was not even the mainland. It was New York.

MARTIN: New York.

MIRANDA JR.: And sort of coming to New York was important to me. So, when I was recruited for the PhD program in clinical psychology, and the University of Puerto Rico gave me a scholarship to come to New York, it was like the special combo. I was coming to New York, I was going to study clinical psychology, and I was getting dollars to be in New York, but go back to Puerto Rico, because the scholarship meant that I would go back to Puerto Rico to teach for a PhD program that they were starting at the University of Puerto Rico. Of course, none of that happened.

MARTIN: I’m also from New York, you know, born and raised, and I was really interested to read your accounts of like the politics of the time, the politics of kind of Puerto Rican independence, whether, what’s our path forward? Is it just to seek independence, or is it to seek common cause with other historically marginalized people as a part of the United States? It was really sort of interesting to read that. And you say — and I mean, people may forget that there was a lot of — you know, these conversations weren’t all theoretical, some of them were, you know, violent. There was a whole activist wing that actually believed in using violence as a tool.

MIRANDA JR.: Correct.

MARTIN: And you were very kind of torn between the capitalist vision and the socialist vision. But tell me a little bit more about that.

MIRANDA JR.: When you come to New York from Puerto Rico and in your mind, you’re coming back, you’re going back to Puerto Rico your life has a leg in New York and a leg in Puerto Rico. So, the discussions about what is the role of activists and political operatives at that point, we’re talking about the ’70s, right after the young lords, the debate was it’s our job to fight for Puerto Rican independence within the United States, or there was an entire group of people who said, no, our job, because most of us are going to stay here, it’s to rejoin other marginalized communities who are our neighbors and fight for the democratic rights and schooling and housing and health care of all of our communities. It took me a while to get there. But at the end, that’s where I landed.

MARTIN: What is it that attracted you to this public service? And you’ve had all these different, really interesting, you know, roles that you’ve played in the city. What attracted you to that?

MIRANDA JR.: I think a lot was upbringing. I grew up in a very small town in Puerto Rico, Vega Alta, six streets, we’re still those six streets. But my parents were very much involved in the fabric of the town. Very different. It was the Red Cross, the Rotary Club, Lions International, sort of the kinds of civic organizations that work in small places and that help small places. So, we were always involved in some movement helping someone. So, coming to New York, I could not see any other way than getting involved. In fact, when my wife and I finished settling in Washington Heights 43 years ago, for me, it was important to end up in a neighborhood in New York, where it felt like a small town, where people knew each other, where people will gossip with each other, will fight with each other, but would help each other as well.

MARTIN: OK. So, let’s fast forward in your — you obviously believe in equity. You obviously believe in inclusion, but when it comes to your kids, you also believe in doing what’s right for them. You were very aggressive about making sure if what they needed was to go to a school outside the neighborhood, you know, then that’s what they did. I think a lot of people, progressives, a lot of people of color kind of face that dilemma, right. And I was just curious about how you thought about that.

MIRANDA JR.: We work very hard to have opportunities. When we moved into Washington Heights and bought our little house, there was no extra money for private schools. And our neighborhood, our school district was number 32 out of 32 on math and reading achievement. So, the goal then for us as a family was, what is out there that our kids can take advantage of? That’s how we found out about Hunter Campus Schools and sort of enrolled Emmanuel in the testing to see if he will be accepted. We found a Magnet school that was outside of our neighborhood. All of this meant that as my wife and I are working several jobs at the same time, we were juggling how is Lucecita getting to 137th Street, how is Lin Manuel getting to 96th Street on the east side. But we always thought that — and I just think that that’s the motto of people who come into this country, that our kids were going to have a better life than us. I get asked all the time, how do you feel when they call you Lin Manuel’s dad? When you have this other life? I’m like, well, my life, most of my life was, how can my kid do better than me? So, if I became Lin Manuel’s dad, I accomplished the main goal in life. But we could not purchase additional services. So, we went out there and hustled for our kids and our family, and that’s how I get involved in the charter movement as a Democrat in New York when it was seen as a Republican reality.

MARTIN: Well, one of the reasons I was also really interested in that story is if people have seen, you know, your son’s first play, Broadway play in the Heights, that’s kind of one of the dilemmas, you know, do I stay or do I go, right? And I was wondering if you think that — in sort of subconsciously that that story, in a way, came from your own family’s debates about these things?

MIRANDA JR.: Absolutely. And it’s the debate that exists to this day. When Emanuel finished Wesleyan and came back to Washington Heights, and in the Heights becomes a hit. He could go anywhere. Well, he’s settled in Washington Heights, where he’s still raising his kids. My wife and I decided, after much debate, we’re happy here. We’re going to stay here and continue to stick it out in this neighborhood and make sure that this neighborhood survives. And the people who have gone through the struggles and the bad times stay in the neighborhood in whatever next the neighborhood is.

MARTIN: So, in the time we have left, I want to talk about your — the other part of your book, “The Manifesto.” What is it that you think that a lot of the pundits and the experts are getting wrong about the so-called Latino vote?

MIRANDA JR.: I think, first, that as it comes to Latino politics, you cannot analyze Latino politics in the black African American politics, white paradigm. I think that white politicians decided that because we’re not white, we must be black. And so, my parts are all together in the political arena. And that’s not true. Latinos have never voted monolithically for any candidate or party. Just remember, George Bush got 42 percent of the Latino vote nationwide. The second is that we’re not turning Republicans, we are turning into more persuadable voters. The only real Latino poll that has been done, you know the polls where we’re 18 percent. And the error, the standard error is 15 percent. So, you really can conclude very little. But in an all-Latino poll, support for Biden had dropped from the 66, 67 percent that he got in the election to 49 percent, but Trump’s support had not increased. What happened is that then you have this 17 percent of Latinos who are wondering, what are we voting for? And that’s where the persuadable part begins. And third, our propensity is to vote Democrat. But we are going to have to fight for those votes, not because they’re turning Republican, but because they’ll stay home and not vote for anybody.

MARTIN: You say — you point out that about a quarter of the Latino community, as you describe it, are Donald Trump admirers or supporters. And you said that when he speaks about race and immigrants, even his Latino fans can frown, but they also like him. What do they like about him?

MIRANDA JR.: They like that he’s blunt. They like that he’s entertaining. They like that he seems to know everything. You scratch the surface, 90 percent of what comes out of that demon’s (ph) mouth is false. So — but there is this aura around him that he is powerful, that he’s telling the truth, and that he’s telling it as it is.

MARTIN: One of the things you say that’s interesting, when he talks about providing honest work instead of a government handout, many Latinos listen. And for many immigrants, governments are not honest and well-intentioned. And you say that they — some Latinos are invested in what Trump represents because they’ve come from countries that were ruined by corrupt dictators. So, where do you think that Democrats are getting this wrong?

MIRANDA JR.: That they’re treating us as a voting bloc. And we are a bloc but not voting bloc. And you need to understand as Latinos disperse throughout the country, that where we come from, it’s important. The political situation of the country, where we come from, it’s also important. The generation that we belong to, it’s important. The geography, it’s important. Where were we born? Two-thirds of Latinos now are born in the United States. So, they are all of these variables that are going to impact our political reality. And as Democrats, we’re not doing that. I’ll give you an example. In 2000, we spent Latino Victory Fund, of which I’m the chair, a lot of resources in Georgia, even though Latinos are only 3 percent of the vote in Georgia, but we knew that they were right in a purple state. Do we take it? Because Republicans don’t have to win the Latino vote. They just need to corrode and take away enough for us to lose those electoral votes. So, we spent a lot of time in Georgia. You have to invest in a community if you want those votes.

MARTIN: So, before we let you go, I mean, you’ve had like how many lives. I mean, you’ve had a life as a scholar, you’ve had a life as a sort of a political activist, as a public servant. You’ve raised, you know, one of the great cultural figures of our time, you know. And what are you — what’s next for you?

MIRANDA JR.: I had a heart attack in 2017. So, my outlook of life has changed. I would do several things. I want to find a space in doing documentaries. I just hope it’s a great way of telling stories that I care about, where I could do as a short or I could do as a 90-minute. I want to spend more time with my wife. We have been together for 46 years and always doing stuff and spending so much time. And something that COVID told us when we were in seclusion is that we actually like each other, and that we like being with each other. And I want to make sure that the next generation of grandchildren go ahead with a great bang. We love our grandchildren. So, I want to spend more time with my grandchildren. I want to do many of the things that I haven’t done yet.

MARTIN: Well, Luis Miranda, Jr., thank you so much for speaking with us.

MIRANDA JR.: Thank you. Thank you for having me.