New group vows to audit Hispanic Heritage Month promises

A new nonprofit organization is launching Monday, pledging to keep tabs on promises made by different organizations during Hispanic Heritage Month, which ended Sunday.

Aquí: The Accountability Project is making its debut with a six-figure investment in a Spanglish ad called “Y Ahora Qué?,” or “What Now?”

“The parties are done, the awards have been given,” a narrator says at the start of the ad.

The spot, which calls Latinos “the driving force of the American economy,” outlines areas of American life where Latinos are underrepresented, from boardrooms to Hollywood.

Aquí will be led by Nathaly Arriola Maurice, an experienced political strategist who served two years in the Biden White House as director of partnerships.

“Today’s ad sends a clear message: to all who spent this last month celebrating and praising our nation’s diverse Latino communities — show us the receipts, we need to see substantive representation,” Arriola Maurice said in a statement.

“Commemorative receptions are meaningless if Latinos are invisible in your company’s board rooms and C-suites.”

Arriola Maurice told The Hill the group will target every power structure and institution in the country, but its first focus will be on corporate America.

“When you say corporate you’re talking about the entertainment industry, news, corporate boardrooms, I mean, it’s just across the board — it’s where we think our efforts are immediately most needed. But we’re definitely going to be looking at every power structure,” she said.

The launch ad says Latinos “barely exist in the boardroom ranks” — according to a 2022 report by Deloitte, Hispanic representation in Fortune 100 boards “has remained relatively flat since 2004.”

And that flatline is low: Hispanic people represent about 20 percent of the U.S. population, but only about 4.4 percent of board seats.

Arriola Maurice said Aquí, which will launch its own campaigns and support other groups in their representation efforts, is a product of five years of brainstorming with allies, some of whom became the nonpartisan nonprofit’s board members.

The Aquí board includes strategists like José Calderón of Calderon Solutions, Francela Chi de Chinchilla, Latino Community Foundation CEO Jacqueline Martinez Garcel, Code for America CEO Amanda Renteria, and Héctor Sánchez Barba, who runs Mi Familia Vota, a major voter outreach organization.

“Racially motivated attacks, like the shooting in El Paso that killed 23 people, highlight the dangers of allowing anti-Latino hate and rhetoric to go unchecked,” Martinez Garcel said. 

“Aquí intends to hold major institutions in our society accountable in countering this hate. It’s time for them to center Latino communities and their interests: in the leaders they hire, whose stories are told, and who tells them.”