This year Latinos helped swing a presidential election, spoke at prime time spots during both party conventions, and emerged as one of the most coveted voter groups in the country.
But all that's hard to notice from a glance at Time Magazine's selection of “Person of the Year 2012.” As NBC Latino points out, there’s no Latino candidate on this year’s list, with the exception of “undocumented immigrants.”
Last year “The Protester” took the award, a clear choice in a year of protest movements around the globe, including Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.
An invisible population stepped forward on June 15, 2012, to stake its claim to the American Dream. On that day, President Obama declared that certain undocumented immigrants — a group simply labeled "illegal" by many — would not be subjected to deportation, under broad-ranging conditions.
So far, the undocumented’s prospects don’t look so good. The candidate placed 17th out of 40 as of midday Tuesday, well behind non-person candidates like the Mars Rover and the Higgs Boson Particle. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy currently holds the lead, followed by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Despite the lack of Latino candidates in their “Person of the Year 2012” list, Time Magazine did predict back in February that Latinos would tip the presidential election.
And the magazine can’t exactly be blamed if they have trouble picking out Latino leaders. A Pew Hispanic Center survey from 2010 found a whopping 64 percent of Latinos didn’t know who they’d pick as the country’s most important Hispanic leader. Second place was “no one,” with 10 percent, followed by Sonia Sotomayor with 7 percent.
But that was also before an election season that left little doubt about who the emerging national leaders are.
Who might have made the 2012 list? Let us know in the comments and check out the slideshow below for five suggestions.
