10 APRIL 11-17, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | his Spanish is a former congressman and the current mayor of Aurora: Mike Coffman. “I really force myself,” Coffman says. “If I didn’t speak or study it for a week, I’d be slipping.” Aurora bills itself as “the world in a city,” and is “certainly the most diverse community in the state,” Coffman says. It’s the third- largest city in Colorado but has the second- largest percentage of Hispanic residents, right behind Denver. Of the nearly 400,000 residents, about 120,000 identify as Latino. About 86,000 of those people came from Mexico as immi- grants, and another 10,000 are from Central America. More than 2,000 Aurora residents arrived here from El Salvador. The fi rst political debate in Spanish be- tween two non-Latino candidates was a decade ago, when the then-incumbent 6th Congressional District U.S. representative (Coffman) debated progressive Andrew Romanoff. The debate was “highly scripted. I knew the questions,” Coffman admits. “We worked out the questions in advance.” Coffman, who grew up in Aurora, went on to win re-election in 2014; soon after, the district was redrawn to include more of Aurora. To continue reaching his Latino and Spanish-speaking constituents, and anticipating he’d be dealing with more im- migration issues, he stepped up his efforts to master the language. He was criticized, though, for being a Republican trying to reach Hispanic voters by speaking Spanish — especially in 2016, during Donald Trump’s presidential cam- paign. But he defends the move. “It was a softening of the image of a Republican in a very diverse community, to be able to say, ‘Oh, okay, he respects us,’” Coffman says. “The more popular view of Republicans is anti-immigrant, but that helped break that narrative.” In 2017, he started a Twitter account in Spanish, @MiRepCoffmanCO. It lasted more than a year and 268 tweets before it was shut down, shortly after conservative Twitter users blasted Coffman’s support for DACA. But he kept working on learning the language. He hired a retired schoolteacher from Colombia as a Spanish tutor, and has taken classes with her for two hours every Sunday night for the past ten years, he says. Today he does radio and TV interviews in Spanish. He emails his assistant in Spanish. He hosts town hall meetings in Spanish. He’s considering delivering a State of the City address in Spanish. In early December, he went to Chihua- hua, Mexico, to sign a sister-city agreement; many of Aurora’s Mexican immigrants come from Chihuahua. “I did everything in Spanish, all the meet- ings in Spanish. I was pretty fried by the end,” he admits. “It did help my Spanish, but then I was so burned out I took a break and slid back a little.” Speaking Spanish is “an enormous sign of respect for the Hispanic immigrant com- munity,” Coffman says. “I know when I do news, even if I make a mistake — I make fewer now — that they would rather have me make a mistake than do it in English.” A Sign of Respect: How Spanish Has Helped With the Migrant Crisis Polis and Hickenlooper both polish their skills by conversing with native Spanish speakers. While the language comes in handy for politicians, Polis notes that “it’s a great skill for anyone.” Spanish is “absolutely” helpful for deal- ing with the migrant crisis, says the gover- nor, who’s met with dozens of Venezuelan migrants. “Just to hear fi rsthand from people rather than through intermediaries exactly what’s going on,” he adds. “I was able to hear their stories and what they faced and what they faced going through Mexico, what they faced in Colorado. “It’s been very helpful in working with Den- ver and others to craft a successful response.” When Johnston took offi ce in July, Den- ver had already been in a state of emergency for almost eight months because of the infl ux of new arrivals, as Texas Governor Greg Abbott (another Spanish speaker with no Hispanic roots) continued busing migrants from the southern border to the Mile High City. While the new mayor knew that his Spanish would be useful in offi ce, “I could not have anticipated the extent to which it would be important fi rsthand when I’m standing in a group of eighty newcomers from Venezuela who are tightly gathered around me, wanting to have their questions answered,” Johnston says. His Spanish skills “helped tremendously. It means I can have real, direct, personal conversations with every person who’s ar- rived, and I think they feel a sense of con- nection and comfort because I can speak the language,” he adds. “And there are certain things it’s just hard to do through translation. When someone’s in tears and telling you their story, it’s hard to turn to a translator,” Johnston says. “I get much more direct, much more moving, much more authentic feedback than I would get if I had to go through a translator. That, I think, is a gift in itself, because often it’s not what people say but how they say it, and if you can’t feel the emotion, understand the nuance of the language, it’s harder to hear.” In his own words, Johnston recites the most common things he hears from migrants: “Gracias, alcalde, estamos feliz para estar aquí en Denver.” (Thanks, Mayor, we’re happy to be here in Denver.) “Quiero decirle que no necesitamos nada. Solo que quiero es un trabajo.” (I want to tell you that we don’t need anything. All I want is a job.) “Me puedes ayudar encontrar un tra- bajo?” (Can you help me fi nd a job?) The Vote Is In: Practice Makes Perfect Hickenlooper vouches for Johnston’s Span- ish abilities. The two talked to migrants together in February. “His Spanish is excellent,” Hickenlooper says. “He’s obviously someone who has taken the time and the effort. Maybe he’s not perfectly fl uent yet, but boy, he was very effective at making sure he was understood.” Johnston is proud to say that his Spanish “has gotten much better” over the years. One of the key improvements, he says, has been learning different accents in Spanish. “The Venezuelan accent was diffi cult at fi rst. It’s a very different accent than Mexico or Spain or even Guatemala or Costa Rica,” Johnston says. “There’s always more to learn.” His other struggles involve the subjunc- tive, which is used to express desires, opin- ions and possibilities, among other things. “I’m still not as good as I could be,” he says. “Sometimes I avoid those.” Conjugating verbs mid-sentence is a challenge, too. Highly technical terms are beyond John- ston’s current skills, he admits. For example, he couldn’t explain in Spanish “what the credible fear standard is for asylum ap- plicants versus temporary protected status recipients,” he says, referring to the guideline for granting legal asylum in the U.S. based on the reason a migrant leaves their country. “There’s some technical language that I’m less good at,” Johnston says. “But I’ll either use Spanglish sometimes or I will just go to the most common word and not the technical one.” During a press conference to talk about a new pilot program to decrease car thefts in Denver, the term for “car theft” (el robo de los carros) escaped Johnston while he was answering a question from a Spanish- speaking reporter. Colorado’s other Spanish-speaking politi- cians have made similar stumbles. Although Polis can “follow most conversations” in Spanish, “there are technical words that I won’t know how to say,” he says. “So, like, when I’m doing a briefi ng on something that I normally do in English, I might have to learn the terms for ‘economic growth projections’ or something like that.” Vocabulary is a problem for Coffman, too. While he has no problem “if I’m speaking about policy, if I were speaking about poetry or something like that, it would probably be a mess,” he admits. “Where I have trouble is describing things sometimes,” Coffman says. “You learn the kind of vo- ¿Hablas Español? continued from page 8 continued on page 12 Senator John Hickenlooper learned to love Spanish on his honeymoon; Mayor Mike Coffman is always studying the language. BENNITO L. KELT Y BENNITO L. KELT Y
