“The Rise of the Latino Far Right:” Why Latinos Are Turning Out for Trump

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Paola Ramos, thanks so much for joining us. Your book title is “The Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means for America.” Let’s kind of just unpack the title here. How about the Rise – how did we get to where we are now?

PAOLA RAMOS, AUTHOR, “DEFECTORS”:  Yeah, so I think in, starting in in 2016, I was actually working in the Hillary Clinton campaign at that point. And I think so much of the, the theory of change in that campaign, so much of what was supposed to be the winning formula for Hillary Clinton, I I remember perfectly, was this idea that in the face of someone like Donald Trump, not that at that point was saying things like, you know, Mexican immigrants were criminals or rapists words that everyone heard. The idea was that the Latino voting block would sort of rise in these unprecedented numbers in the face of someone like Donald Trump. Now, regardless of whether they were Democrats or Republicans or independents, that’s what everyone believed. And then fast forward, of course, to November, 2016 and the case is that less than 50% of Latinos showed up. And then comes November, 2020. And after four years of Trumpism, after the country sees family separations after the Biden campaign shows the electorate sort of those videos reminding people of the cries of those children being separated after four years of that, Donald Trump does better with Latino voters in 2020 than he does in 2016. I think it’s believed between eight to 10 points. Pew Research has him at 38% in November, 2020. And so at that point, based on those results, based on a lot of the conversations that I was having across the country with Latino voters understanding the way that in very subtle ways they were warming up to things like mass deportations and the wall and Christian nationalism, I understood that Latinos were sending a different message now that perhaps that idea of the Democratic Party was becoming a little bit more fractured.

SREENIVASAN: So you break the book down kind of into three big subsections tribalism, traditionalism and trauma. Explain the role of what tribalism is and how it contributes to this rise.

RAMOS: Absolutely. So I think when, when we think of the idea of Latino Trump supporters, the first thing that comes to mind is to really think about the MAGA movement or even politics. And I think what I, what I discovered in the book is that the real answers, the hardest answers are the ones that are perhaps more uncomfortable to talk about, no? And by that I mean really understanding the sort of racial baggage that I believe a lot of Latinos, including myself, know that a lot of us are caring from Latin America, you know, what it means to sort of have been colonized for so many years, the weight of colonization. That in and of itself creates, I believe a lot of internalized racism, a lot of colorism that then manifests in American politics in not so neat ways, you know, and that’s then how you can explain the fact that even like someone like Donald Trump feels so comfortable, for instance, going to the Bronx, you know, talking to a group of black Latinos and Latino Trump supporters because he believes that he can sort of tap into a racial and ethnic grievance that is very familiar to some Latinos.

SREENIVASAN: You write about a woman named Isabel. What, what does she represent about this idea of this anti-blackness?

RAMOS: So Isabel is someone that I talked to in the Bronx. Isabel is a Afro-Latina. She’s a black Dominican woman. She’s the owner of a hair salon in the Bronx. Trump supporter in 2016 and 2020 and she plans on voting for him now. And Isabel is someone that was particularly drawn to Donald Trump, not just because of his policy proposals, but specifically because of the way in which he sort of criminalized and stigmatized something like Black Lives Matter. She saw a distance between herself and her identity as a Afro-Latina and the sort of American black population. And even when I was conversing with her, something as simple of how do you identify is know, and her first answer was, well, I’m a Hispanic, and then when you push back and you say, and what is your race? You know, how do you, how do you see your race? How do you identify through that lens? And she kept going back to this idea, well, I am Hispanic and I’m not black. You know, always sort of ensuring that she created a distance between herself and black Americans. And so the question is how do you explain that? What, what does she see in Trumpism through the way that she identifies? It has so much to do with the 15th century, you know, and the way that the Spanish colonizers really instituted a caste system and really gave so many Latinos, you know, regardless of your race and your background and your ethnicity, it gave everyone the permission to always sort of draw a direct line to your whiteness, know, always draw a direct line to the Spanish colonizers. And in this country where sort of race is always seen in binaries, someone like is, you know, when she has to opt between being black or being white under the guise of being a Hispanic, she chooses whiteness. And in that, that’s where sort of Trumpism is able to, to really tap that grievance.

SREENIVASAN: You have spent quite a bit of time with Latino evangelicals, which is a subgrouping that most Americans haven’t been paying attention to. Why is that group important in this coming election cycle?

RAMOS: I think it’s important because I think Republicans and Donald Trump and the Christian Right have understood that as they’re seeing sort of the rate of white evangelicals and white Christians decline in this country, they’re seeing an opportunity within Latino evangelicals. Know. And even if we think about November, 2020, during that campaign cycle, Donald Trump launches his evangelicals for Trump, not even his Latino evangelicals for Trump, but his evangelicals for Trump national campaign. He launches it not in Ohio or Pennsylvania or West Virginia. He goes to Miami-Dade County. He talks to a group of Latino evangelicals. And so the opportunity they’re seeing there is the fact that Latinos have become the fastest growing group of evangelicals in this country. They’re also, if you dig into the numbers, you see that Latino evangelicals, over 50% of them believe in things like Christian nationalism. They, they’re able to sort of blur the lines between church and state. And what used to be safe spaces for a lot of Latino evangelicals. You know, so many asylum seekers and migrants and immigrants would come to this country. One of the first things they do is you find a church, you know, that is sort of where you find where, where you feel at home, what used to be these safe spaces, not these places of refuge, these places of community. In the last five years, they’ve become so politicized. Now you have so many pastors that I’ve interviewed that are starting to really merge the world of MAGA and politics and faith. And typically through the sort of framing of it’s good versus evil knowing. And that really catches people’s attention. And then these pastors, they’re very charismatic pastors that of course are very commanding, have so much power, you know, over, over their folks. I remember during Covid, during the pandemic, and one of the women that I interviewed told me that she wouldn’t listen to Dr. Fauci, but she would listen to her pastor. It was her pastor who would tell her to not take the vaccine, to not pay attention to mainstream media, to pay attention to him. So that sort of shows you the way that these spaces are shifting, and part of it is a political strategy. If white Christians wants to survive, if Trumpism wants to survive, they understand that they need Latinos and they’re doing it.

SREENIVASAN: You introduced us to a character Anthony Aguera known as Conservative Anthony. What’s he like?

RAMOS: Anthony Aguera is someone that is typically patrolling the US Mexico border. By patrolling, I mean, he sits in his car and for many hours during the day he has a phone, he has a GoPro and he essentially has become, in his own words, like a, an independent journalist now. And so he’s just doing these live streams up and down the US Mexico border, particularly in the El Paso sector. Now, most of his content is essentially the following. You know, he takes live stream videos of asylum seekers that are crossing of migrants that are crossing. And typically the description of those videos as he’s talking to the camera, is this idea that those migrants that he’s capturing are dangerous people that they’re here to invade the country and that they pose a fundamental threat to the United States. He’s been doing this for, for years. Now, Anthony Aguera is a first generation American; his family are Mexican immigrants. They left Mexico because of violence, is I think what Anthony Aguera represents is really an extreme example. And I have to be very clear now, he’s an extreme example. All of these characters are extreme examples of a pattern that is happening. and it’s this idea that more and more Latinos, particularly third-generation Latinos, particularly a sector like Anthony that is becoming more Americanized and more assimilated, are warming up to the idea of the mass deportations and the wall and the otherizing. And I think Anthony Aguera is, is the most extreme example of that. Now, he’s someone that in conversation, and most of what he wanted to do is sort of reinforce the idea like, look, Paola, like I am, I can be a Mexican America, but I’m not like them. They’re different than I am. And I think once again, that sort of what Trumpism is really betting on, you know, this idea that people like Anthony Aguera have become so Americanized, you know, and so assimilated that they too can sort of buy into the nativism knowing that they too can play the us versus them game. And on top of that, I would say the, the most sort of complicated factor in all of that is that, and I got this impression with Anthony, you know, and think there’s this, this fear among some Latinos that even though they are as American as anyone else, even though they have been in this country since they were born, I think there’s this fear that sort of white America, I know, mainstream America will always see them as these sort of perpetual foreigners in their own country. You know? And I got even that sense with, with, with Anthony, you know, the sort of way that he kept reinforcing his Americanness. And I think that fear of sort of your fellow Americans otherizing you then for some Latinas, that in and of itself can sort of lead you towards extremism. You know, it can sort of lead you to, to really, really, really drive you to make the case that I belong in this country. And in some ways, it leads you to someone like Anthony Aguera.

SREENIVASAN: Just in June the Trump campaign kind of relaunched a coalition called Latino Americans for Trump. And I wonder if you see anything about the, just the way that that’s titled and labeled, is that important?

RAMOS: It’s very important. It’s so strategic and it’s so intentional that they’re not just saying Latinos for Trump, but it’s Latino Americans for Trump, you know, and it’s, again, it’s betting on this idea that there is a segment of Latinos that is so Americanized now that it would be very easy for them to tap into the otherizing and the nativism and the anti-immigrant sentiment. And I think if you look at the Latino electorate today, compared to what it was 20 years ago, there’s some sense to that strategy. You know, they see that it is third generation Latinos that are the fastest growing segment of Latinos. They’re now understanding that among the Latino voting block, the majority are US born. The majority are under the age of 50, and the majority speak English, maybe Spanglish, but the majority are English speakers. And so again, the bet there is to really try and drive Latinos to, to, to get a group of Latinos to believe, look, you are part of us, you’re not one of them. You’re not part of those Latinos. Know, you’re not part of the black coalition. You’re not part of the immigrants. And again, the other rising infuse with the miss and disinformation is very powerful. No, I say this all the time, just because we’re Latinos or immigrants does not make us immune to that rhetoric. No. In fact, there’s a lot of power to that when you are in fact a minority in this country and someone tells you, you know what? You belong with us. That’s really powerful.

SREENIVASAN: You also are able to, in this book, take this sort of 30,000 foot view of history for a lot of readers that might not really know about American involvement in Latin America and South America. And you write: “the US’ legacy of spreading American exceptionalism in Latin America has cast a long shadow directly impacting its current battle with democracy.” Unpack that a little bit.

RAMOS: Yeah. So I think specifically, I write that in the context of I think a phenomenon that we’re seeing now in, in politics, and we’ve been seeing it for, for, for years at this point, right? For instance just to ground people in, in real examples, you often see the Democratic party trying to cast Trump as a dictator, for instance. They use the word “caudillo” lot. And the thinking there goes, the strategy is that if you can make a growing group of Latinas believe that Donald Trump is un Dictator, then they will be scared of that image, you know, because of the sort of political trauma that many Latinos carry with them. Now, it’s more complicated than that. You know, there’s a certain risk of a backlash there. And that is because I think so many Latinos have a very complicated relationship with something like strongman rule and know in ways they’ve been conditioned to believe, even through the US government, they’ve been conditioned to believe that at times when sort of democracy feels messy and unstable and chaotic at times, this idea of strongman rule is necessary. So to bring it back known to the US government into the way perhaps that the US has created that context. Think about the 20th century, you know, and the way that the US government in the sort of name of reading the west from communism, you know, and in the name of the Red Scare in Latin America, whether it was from El Salvador to Peru to Chile, Nicaragua the United States supported strongman rule, and some cases they supported military juntas covertly, overtly. And it created that condition that in certain moments when it has to do with ridding communism or perhaps in, you know, any form of political instability, this idea of authoritarianism may be necessary. And then when you add sort of the, the fact that many Latinos that come to the United States from Latin America, over 70% carry those political traumas with them, and those are traumas that are then passed on through generations, then you really start to explain, you know, why something like framing Donald Trump as a “caudillo” may not always really stick with people.

SREENIVASAN: What was interesting just in the past couple of months to watch is how Kamala Harris, for example, has pivoted more to the right on immigration-related issues. Her response to Donald Trump is usually about a piece of legislation, the bipartisan bill that the former president helped kill from the outside. And I wonder, you know, when it comes to, say, states like Arizona where you just recently were for a reporting trip, how, how does this play out?

RAMOS: Yeah, look, I think we’re about to see how how that message will resonate in, in a battleground state like Arizona or Nevada. Now, I think what you’re seeing is that makes sense, know, after, after eight years of sort of injecting so much fearmongering in the American electorate, I mean, I’m talking to you from New York City, we’re miles away from the border and I can’t tell you how often it is to find New Yorkers telling me, well, migrants are posing an existential threat to my being. And I think that just tells you the way that sort of Donald Trump and Republicans have done a really good job at sort of creating so much fear about migrants and asylum seekers in the border, that you have a de– that you have a democratic party that is sort of playing into that Republican trap and is really shifting to the center on this issue. Now, in the November, 2020 election, in 2016, Democrats typically sort of distanced themselves from Republicans by saying, look, we are the party that will pass comprehensive immigration reform, right? Know we are the party that will humanize and, and sort of reinstate dignity at the border and integrity at the border. And here you have Vice President Kamala Harris that is shifting that message when she talks about the border and immigration. She typically leads with border security and is presenting this image of herself as a sort of tough on crime, tough on the border. And so to your point, does that resonate? Maybe it resonates in Pennsylvania, maybe it resonates here in New York, maybe in Ohio, perhaps in Florida, but in a state like Arizona and Nevada where immigration is so personal for Latinos, there I, I wonder how much that will land. Now we’re talking about a Latino electorate where young Latinos that now have a lot of political power saw their parents sort of being criminalized and targeted by people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, you know, during the 2010, 2011 under SB 10 70, they saw the way that Latinos were racially profiled. And so I think based on the conversations that I’ve had, you know, there’s a lot of Latinos there that are scared of Donald Trump’s mass deportations promises; that are scared of the Arizona immigration ballot that sort of threatens to bring back Arizona to those days of Sheriff Joe Arpaio; and I think that are expecting a different message from the vice president, perhaps a message that is more similar to what Joe Biden said in 2020, which was leading with, we need comprehensive immigration reform, no we need to humanize immigrants. And that’s sort of the sense that I get, yeah.

SREENIVASAN: The book is called “The Defectors: the Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means For America.” Author Paola Ramos, thanks so much for joining us.

RAMOS: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.