Dressed in velvet-red Giuseppe Zanotti sneakers with side zippers and a matching jigsaw blazer, Luis Miranda sits cross-legged in a backroom on the bottom floor of Colfax’s Tattered Cover.
Brushed silver hair curves around his ears and falls just above the collar of his unbuttoned maroon dress shirt.
A veteran political strategist, community organizer and father of acclaimed playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, Luis is on tour to help redefine what a Latino voter looks and sounds like heading into another major presidential election.
“You can have a great position that sells great in my neighborhood, Washington Heights. But not in Denver,” Miranda said. “You have to be fully aware of the reality in which you’re in.”
Drawing on former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s notion that “all politics is local,” Miranda sat down with Susana Córdova, Colorado’s first Latina education commissioner, at the Colfax Tattered Cover on Monday to discuss his new book, "Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit That Is Transforming America."
In the memoir, Miranda recounts decades of political strategy, his work as a philanthropist, what it was like moving to New York City at the age of 19 from the small town of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, and raising a well-known family.
“People tell us all the time that we have a special family. All Latino families don’t have a Lin-Manuel,” Miranda joked to a sold-out Tattered Cover audience.
Discussions around Latino voters following the 2022 elections did not resonate with him, Miranda said. The book began in part to the encouragement of colleagues to scribble his opinions in response on paper. What started as a political book, however, soon turned into a mix of strategy and family.
“It was clear that my family has been so important in everything that I have done,” Miranda said.
Betting on the success of 'Hamilton'
In the memoir, Miranda describes going from his early days in Puerto Rico frequenting theatre cafes to walking around New York City in search of coupons for cheap off-Broadway shows.
“I didn’t even understand what they were saying, I just loved the melody,” Miranda said. “If you ask Lin-Manuel, [he] will tell you, 'If you look at my dad’s LP collection, I only had one choice in life, which was musical theater.'”
That passion has, of course, landed on the shoulders of his son, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who introduced the culture-shattering “Hamilton” musical back in 2015 at the Public Theatre in New York City.
“We always knew that Lin-Manuel was different, and special,” Miranda said.
Miranda first realized the potential of “Hamilton” back in 2009 when Lin-Manuel was invited to perform at the White House. Opting to perform the only song Lin-Manuel had written for the musical at the time, Miranda saw people’s reactions to what his son was putting together.
Years of performing variations of the show and sitting next to A-list celebrities like Paul McCartney, who joked about how difficult it was even for him to snag a ticket, Miranda knew his son was onto something.
He and his wife decided to mortgage their home to help invest in the production of Lin-Manuel’s musical.
“At the end, quite frankly, Lin-Manuel didn’t need our money at all,” Miranda said. “But we knew that there was something here that made sense to bet on.”
On capturing the 'Latino Spirit'
Over the years Miranda has served as a political consultant on campaigns for high-profile politicians like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.
He is a founding partner of the MirRam Group, focusing on political and advocacy consulting, and he serves as a board chair of the Latino Victory Fund, among many other positions.
(His work in politics, of course, has not come without controversy, like in his now-revoked support for an oversight board created by the PROMESA bill.)
In his book, Miranda recounts some of his early work building up the Hispanic Federation, which pulled together an ambitious approach to create an umbrella “Latinidad” that lumped multiple ethnic groups into one. Miranda describes this vision as a need to be larger than “the sum of our parts.”
“[Latinos] can shoot ourselves in the foot when we are parochial,” Miranda said. “As two and a half million Latino New Yorkers, people are going to listen to us differently than if we speak as 1 million Puerto Ricans. We’ll figure out how we divide El Bacalao.”
Miranda writes:
“Unity comes not from some imagined narrative or a project identity but shared experiences and shared values.”
For Miranda, building coalitions across Venezuelan and Puerto Rican migrants, Mexicans and Chicanos in Denver, it’s important to see one another as our cherished loved ones who migrated before.
“Those new immigrants and migrants that are coming into our shores now were us generations ago or a generation ago,” Miranda said. “We quickly forget.”
Miranda hopes this book will encourage people to reach out to their Latino neighbors.
“Getting to know who we are, and others getting to know who we are, is key to this country,” Miranda said to Cordova. “The only way we are going to make it is if we spend some time together.”
From Washington heights to Denver
A father of three and husband to Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda, Miranda spent the previous day celebrating Mother’s Day in their Washington Heights home, cooking for guests and tending to their mother’s garden.
In the closing moments of Miranda’s talk at Tattered, Cordova asked Miranda for advice on raising talented children.
“We always knew what they wanted,” Miranda said. “And we always taught them what the limits were.”
