The Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project released a disheartening report today on Latinos’ attitudes towards national leadership in their community. Three quarters of surveyed Latinos said their community needed a leader, and 62 percent couldn’t name one.  When asked to give the name of a national Latino leader, five percent of respondents named Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and another five percent named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) were also named by an even smaller percentage. Pew suggests the survey results are closely tied to the continued failure of immigration reform policy efforts. 

The study also included interesting findings on Latinos attitudes towards one another. Only 39 percent of Latinos said they shared "a lot" of values with other Latinos, whereas another 39 percent said they only shared "some" and 19 percent said "almost nothing." They also found that only a slight 20 percent of people actively identify as Latino or Hispanic, most choosing instead to identify with their country of origin. These findings in particular highlight the growing diversity among Latinos–an ethnic group that is so often considered homogenous despite composed of dozens of distinct cultures and backgrounds.