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BOGOTÁ — The U.S. presidential election, with Donald Trump running for a third time, revives a question we’ve asked before: Why do so many Latino voters back a candidate who despises them?
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Former President Trump’s disparaging statements include promises to build a wall to shut out migrants or to “send them back to their country.” That is not to mention the more ridiculous, yet unfunny, claims about Haitians eating people’s pets. For those who think that voters rationally consider the pros and cons in terms of their interests, the decision of Latinos to vote for a racist and anti-immigrant candidate, well, just boggles the mind.
Journalist Paola Ramos explores this phenomenon in her books on Latino “deserters.” Instead of attacking these conservative voters, she challenges the idea of reducing Hispanic-American identity — some 35 million voters — to a compact and homogenous mass. Yet to reject a clear-cut identity is always problematic in a country obsessed with identities and ethnic labels.
Tribalism, traditionalism, trauma
I remember being tagged a “Latinx” when I first entered U.S. academic life, this being a relatively new term that encompasses many things but refers above all to a Latino or Latina migrant in the United States or offspring of Hispanic immigrants there.
The term felt strange, as we used to say among others of my colleagues who had spent their childhood years in Latin American countries, as it overlooks a variety of singular experiences relating to our knowledge of language, legal barriers, culture and social class, not to mention the differences among our birth countries.
“The trinity” of factors to understand the vote: tribalism, traditionalism and trauma.
“Latinx” is an unfamiliar term of course to many Latinos, but useful to any analysis of the reductionist approach to understanding the Hispanic vote. Indeed there are nuances or differences even inside the right-wing Hispanic voter base, so Ramos opts for “the trinity” of factors to understand the vote: tribalism, traditionalism and trauma.
Tribalism has to do with an inherent racism among Latinos, to be seen, for example, in a prevalent opinion among white Cubans that they are not really Hispanic or Latino, like those other “darker” Hispanics. They may be offended to be put into the same bag as those, mostly poorer migrants.
Then there is traditionalism — or conservatism — rooted in a Christian culture that fears new values associated with diversity or women’s rights over their own bodies.
And trauma relates to fleeing countries where the Left (rather than the sitting dictator) is blamed for everything that went wrong. The best cases are Cuba and Venezuela.
Ignore the Elephant
Simplification of identities or of voter conduct is not of course an ailment exclusive to America. Just recently in Colombia, Socialist President Gustavo Petro asked the Supreme Court President Gerson Chaverra how a black man be could be conservative?
In Don’t Think of An Elephant!, author George Lakoff warns against believing mistakenly that people could never act against their own interests. Voting pertains more to the world of the imagination, to one’s values and sense of the self within society, Lakoff writes. Yes, sometimes they will coincide with identity elements and other times they coincide with interests, but many times they do not.
Hence the complexity, but also the fascination, of democracies.
