Summary
Trump’s support among Latinos has plummeted as he nears his first 100 days in office, with many saying they feel betrayed by the scope of his policies, particularly immigration enforcement.
Almost three in four Latinos (72%) now disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president.
Many Venezuelans, for example, have been impacted by the decision to revoke their Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
“Today, I feel the same way I felt in Venezuela— that they’re going to come take me somewhere I won’t be able to escape from.” “This is completely different from what I thought it was going to be.”
Now I’m not an American and definitely not a Latino, but I’ve heard there’s a huge amount of Latinos who hate Latinos and want them all to stay out of the country (I.e fuck you, got mine), which is part of why they vote republican. Also all the Cuban refugees who really hate Cuba so they also vote republican just to make sure democrats don’t ease the sanctions on Cuba - which are of course making life hard for people who have not yet escaped Cuba. Hell I bet without the sanctions a lot of people wouldn’t be leaving it in the first place.
If all that is true, honestly, this is a peak leopards eating faces moment.
Hate is a strong word, and it’s a bit more nuanced than that. There is an internalized hostility that comes from the colonial era, where the way to climb the social ladder was by taking actions to seem more white. Like changing your name, converting, marrying a whiter* person, etc. These changes often explicitly implied rejecting whatever you were before. Anything indigenous was deemed as less than and less worthy than European stuff and therefore bad and to be abandoned.
And this is where this Hispanic on Hispanic hostility comes from. There is this idea that it is “better” to be on the side of privilege and those below are seen as a threat I.e. (the whites might notice you are not that white if they see you hanging out with those more connected to their roots).
This distinction is important because it comes not from blind-hate but from intergenerational trauma, as a defense mechanism.
A lot of modern day Latinos discovered what ttheir ancestors discovered a long time ago: They don’t see all the colors you see. The only see non-white.
Unfortunately a lot of the latino vote comes from the religious, macho, and anti-liberal attitudes they hold. Lots of them are catholic, and even if the republicans are absolutely full of shit when it comes to being “Christian”, their propaganda claiming they are has been very effective. The latter two are in a way perversely tied together. They like macho “strong man” leaders, but unfortunately there are a lot of latin/hispanic countries run by strong man leaders claiming to be liberal leftists that are nothing more than tyrants and authoritarians that wreck their countries. So they vote anti-liberal, associating liberal with tyrants, while supporting yet another “strong man” fascist that will fuck the country up.
*I am not latin, however I worked in a latin country and have worked with several latin/hispanic people and learned what I could about their country, culture and politics, and this is how it was explained to me.
Oh darn! If only somebody had warned them about what would happen…
But Trump promised* he wouldn’t!
*Not promised, but strongly implied.†
†By strongly implied, meaning “at least left open the possibility.”††
††Except for the times he said the opposite thing.†††
†††This was every time.
While I upvoted you, and we absolutely did tell them that. Many of them through no fault of their own weren’t reached by the message. And that’s something we need to figure out how to fix. Because with the consolidation of media and AI, this is only going to get worse.
Patting ourselves on the back about being right. Will only comfort us so much, when our lack of reach etc. Continues to haunt us
