Voces: Latino Vote 2024

In partnership with PBS, ITVS and Latino Public Broadcasting we are proud to present a series VOCES: LATINO VOTE 2024, a new documentary and collection of digital shorts that examine the priorities of the politically diverse Latino electorate in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

The documentary “Voces: Latino Vote 2024” is an hour-long documentary produced and directed by Bernardo Ruíz accompanied by a series of video shorts and stories produced by doc filmmaker Andrés Cediel and CA Local News Fellows.“We’ve reached the point where there’s no longer a debate about whether we should be joining forces,” said Cediel, a professor at UC Berkeley Journalism and video cohort manager at the California Local News Fellowship Program, about the film project that spanned newsrooms and platforms. “The more people collaborating, the better. It increases our reach and our brand. The industry is changing so quickly, we have to be able to do everything at the same time. There is no one organization with the capacity to do it all.”

The documentary and shorts, which began airing nationwide in October, take a deep dive into the powerful and complicated Latino voting bloc across multiple states. Three digital short videos, most of which focus on the experiences of young Latino voters in California, involve local news fellows Erik Galicia at The Fresno Bee, Victoria Ivie at The O.C. Register, Magaly Muñoz at the Oakland Post and Constanza Eliana Chinea with Caló News. A forth short is produced in collaboration with the fellowship program’s newsroom partner El Tímpano. Reporters at each of the outlets will also publish related print pieces. Watch the digital shorts here: 

• Issues That Matter To A Future Voter
• Santa Ana Voters
• Black, Latino and American: An Afro-Latina Voter
• A First-Time Voter's Complicated Path Navigating Family and Politics

About the documentary and shorts Cediel said the film and shorts highlight the potential effects of Latino voters on the presidential elections as well as state and local races. Latinos now have substantial enough numbers, with some 17.5 million voters nationally, to influence battleground states — not just states like California or Texas that already tend to vote blue and red. He says the documentary “unpacks” the rising trend of Latinos skewing more conservative and likely to vote Republican and reveals some surprising voting impulses along gender and age lines. The film builds on Ruíz’s 2020 ITVS film, Latino Vote: Dispatches from the Battleground that documented how Latinos were then poised to be the largest voting bloc in the electorate. “I was excited to collaborate with a talented team of journalists and filmmakers on this follow-up to our 2020 PBS documentary, which I believe offers an in-depth and nuanced look at a politically diverse community at a time of significant challenges to journalism and independent documentary,” Ruíz said. The project is a collaboration among CPB, PBS, PBS SoCal, ITVS, Latino Public Broadcasting and the California Local News Fellowship Program.