“I’ve been part of this movement in Arizona that has made Arizona a battleground state, and I am very proud of that,” Terán told me on the day she announced her candidacy. “We have built up political power, and when people bought into the narrative that Latinos don’t vote, we were like, ‘Yes, Latinos do vote!,’ ‘Si, se puede,’ and we’re going to have an impact.”
One of Terán’s early victories was leading the effort to recall Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, the hardline conservative lawmaker who authored and sponsored the infamous state law SB 1070, (known at the time as the “show me your papers” law), which impelled a wide-ranging crackdown on immigrants, including those in the country legally, and which the state’s Latino communities took as full-fledged attack on their presence in the state. That organizing effort powered the rise of other Latino politicians and activists in the state, including Gallego, who protested and organized alongside Terán in the 2010s. It also led to the more formal political mobilization of the state’s booming Latino population since.