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WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE LATINE VOTE?  
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Briana Ureña-Ravelo
November 11, 2024
Prism
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_ The diverse Latine experience, shaped by factors like immigration
status, race, and class, is too often oversimplified—both by
outsiders and within our own communities _

Donald Trump is greeted by supporters while walking on the stage to
deliver remarks on Sept. 12, 2024, at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in
Tucson., Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon // Latino USA Apple Podcast

 

Latine support for Trump surged in the recent election, with 46% of
Latine voters casting their ballot for the former president. This
marks a 14% increase from the 2020 election, where Trump picked up 32%
of the Latine vote. These numbers are all that most pundits,
pontificators, and horrified spectators can talk about—and they seem
particularly fascinated by the fact that one of Trump’s strongest
sources of support came from Latine men, 55% of whom voted for him. 

These numbers have also taken many within Latine communities by
surprise, with an ensuing chorus of conversations wanting to
understand or offer explanations for the why of it all. Many Latine
people are now explaining just how much everyone got wrong about our
communities, but even the conversations about Latine politics led by
us can be insufficient—primarily because of a misguided sense of
“our” community. 

It’s easy to say that it’s just outsiders who “don’t get”
us, but we vastly misunderstand and mischaracterize _ourselves_, over
and underestimating our politics within the U.S. political and social
paradigm.

This summer, I attended a progressive Latine organization’s offsite
Democratic National Convention event at a bar in Chicago. The event
featured a panel and musical performance. Present were the who’s who
of young, progressive Latine politics and nonprofit community
organizing, including journalists, area aldermen, politicians, and
progressive career people. I was truly astonished at how out of touch
most present seemed to be about the upcoming elections and the
politics of Latine people. They danced around the topic of Trump
support or otherwise waved it away as “our people” being
“fooled.” They made no mention of the tensions that are growing
between long-term Latine people in the U.S. and newly arrived
Venezuelan migrants, which I thought was irresponsible. Were they not
seeing the same reports and footage I was of increasing antagonism
from Mexicans toward incoming Central American, Venezuelan,
and Haitian
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both stateside
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that ads targeting the Latine vote should have “our music in it.”
It all felt infantilizing and condescending—and there was no plan to
tackle the increasing wave of right-wing and fascist politics in our
communities.

It’s important to note that Democrats ran a campaign like they
wanted to sorely lose with Latine voters. For further insights, I
reached out to Latine people in communities particularly versed and
affected by the rhetoric and policy of the Republican and Democratic
parties, and those who are all too familiar with anti-Blackness within
the Latine community. 

Caroline Cotto, a queer West Indian woman from Puerto Rico, is a
sociology and psychology major with an academic focus on undocuqueer
politics. She told me that while Trump has been “explicitly racist,
sexist, and xenophobic,” it’s also worth noting that Vice
President Kamala Harris showed little interest in the well-being of
marginalized communities while running for president. Cotto cited how
candidates’ messages shift between their campaigns and their actual
policies once in office. As one example, President Joe Biden and
Harris promised
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usher in a “fair, orderly, and humane immigration system.” Not
long after, Harris traveled to Central America and told
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“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about
making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not
come. Do not come.” 

Regarding the role faith and religion play in the vote, Evangelicals
are a large mobilizing base, and some have claimed their influence
among the Latine community. It’s true that Evangelicalism is
becoming increasingly prevalent
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community, and evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism is the
backbone of the Republican party. But this type of Christianity only
accounts for a fraction of Latine voters, so while this is a growing
political force, it isn’t the primary one. Catholicism still plays
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major role in the lives of the Latine community, which shapes views on
abortion and LGBTQIA+ issues. While having colonial European roots,
the hierarchal faith and its veneration-based traditions are still
largely embraced, and these long-held bastions are not to be torn
down. 

Ja’Loni Amor Owens, a Black lesbian Latine person of Puerto Rican
descent, is a Muslim feminist writer, lawyer, and community care
worker. They said it’s important to understand that Latin
America’s history of colonialism has spread Christian nationalist
ideologies that are now deeply embedded in many Latine communities. 

“Right-wing politics in the U.S. reflect the traditionalism and
patriarchy that many Latines grew up around and still see as
‘community,’” Owens said. “This reality means some white
Latine find that right-wing politics are familiar and affirming. The
Christo-fascist tendencies of the Republican Party, which includes
anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, anti-trans, and anti-abortion at its
foundation, are always more appealing.”

This is why Democrats ran on a reactionary, dismissive, and
out-of-touch center-right platform that prioritized appealing to
conservatives while ignoring the demands and needs of many in the
Latine community. The fallout for that is on Democrats. The Latine
vote did play a crucial role in Trump’s victory, but we also need to
talk about the state of politics within the community _beyond_ what
happens at the ballot every four years.

First, who are Latine people? We are not one culture, community,
people, race, tribal affiliation, class, or documentation status, and
there is vast diversity within these and other categories. Yet when we
pay lip service to the Latine community, by and large, we are talking
about a simplified light, non-Native, non-Black, white, and Mestizo
monolith living in major coastal or border cities, ascribing their
experiences onto everyone else. In recent years, there’s been a
bigger push to talk about these differences, often led by Black and
Indigenous members of the Latine community, but nothing seems to
change, and here we are again being discussed as a monolith. The
variety here and in our home countries, including class, country of
origin, immigration status, race, skin color, casta, and class
positions, lend to our experiences. But these experiences are too
often reduced to simplified caricatures—not just by outsiders, but
by us, too. 

Our experiences with state violence and systemic oppression predate
our families coming to the U.S. Whiteness and national indoctrination
also start in our home countries long before we get here. There is a
misconception I’ve heard parroted by many Latine people that race is
“an American thing,” that “we don’t do race” like Americans
do. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Latine people come from colonized, Catholic-majority countries with
deeply rooted casta systems, horrific track records on femicide, some
of the most restrictive abortion laws on the books, assimilationist
policies of mestizaje, denaturalization laws most notoriously seen in
the Dominican Republican against Dominicans of Haitian descent
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legacies of slavery that in some cases continue today
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violence
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land defenders, dispossession
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violence
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and genocide 
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against Black and Indigenous communities. In short, we come here
ready-made for MAGA. The racism and bigotries of Latine communities
are deeply rooted in our colonial histories. Race, anti-Blackness, and
whiteness are not new concepts to us just because the language around
these subjects might differ.

According to Dash Harris Machado, a Panama City-based public
historian, documentarian, producer, facilitator, and founder of
AfroLatinx Travel, Latine far-right, fascist, racist nationalistic,
xenophobic, religious, and chauvinistic conservatism was first
established in Latin America in the late 1400s—and it “fits
neatly” within the U.S. 

“The indoctrination is a seamless, borderless racial contract of
white-christo-fascism that bizarrely gets obscured and begged off as
something uniquely U.S. when these beliefs are daily bread in Latin
America,” Harris Machado said. 

As conversations around the Latine vote continue to unfold, many in
the community are explaining away the problem by taking the 2016 class
reductionist route: Our communities have been some of the hardest hit
by the economic downturn, and “economic anxiety” is what led many
to vote Republican. While it’s true that we are experiencing higher
unemployment rates 
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the national average, African Americans are experiencing an even
higher unemployment rate. They also experience generational structural
violence and inequality due to their unique history with the U.S. and
because anti-Blackness is enshrined in every aspect of American
life—the worst of which is felt by African American women. Yet this
heightened economic anxiety did not cause them to vote Republican.

All of these complicated and sometimes competing facets of our
identities need to be taken seriously to understand the powerful grasp
of right-wing politics on the Latine community. And we must resist the
desire to act protective and shroud and apologize for an increasingly
problematic reactionary and racist political base. It’s not as
simple as “Latine people want to become white and assimilate.” It
is that many are merely expressing beliefs and politics they have
always had and flexing social power they have always had access to.

_Editor’s Note: This article uses the term “Latine” in
accordance with the author’s preference, rather than “Latinx”
which is typically used in our publication._

_[BRIANA UREÑA-RAVELO is an educator, organizer, cultural critic and
semi-retired punk scenester from Michigan, currently based in the West
Side of Chicago. Her interests include the Midwest, Afro-Latine
culture and histories, Black and Indigenous resistance and futures,
abolition, sweets, underground and DIY music scenes and her cat.]_

_Prism [[link removed]] is an independent and nonprofit
newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and
at the intersections of injustice.” 
VISIT PRISM AT: WWW.PRISMREPORTS.ORG [[link removed]]._
 

* 2024 Elections
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* Latin communities
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* Latinos & Hispanics
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* Hispanic communities
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* Latin voters
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* Hispanic voters
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* Latin politics
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* Hispanic politics
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* Donald Trump
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* Kamala Harris
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* immigrant voters
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* Latin American communities
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* Mexican Americans
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* Catholic Church
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* Catholicism
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* Religion and Politics
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* evangelicals
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* evangelical Christians
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* MAGA
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* Racism
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* misogyny
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* machismo
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