00:00
Why is Trump doing so well with some Latino voters there?
00:08
It is. Welcome back to La Volta.
00:11
I'm Liam Santa Cruz.
00:12
Something very scary. Went down at Madison Square Garden last week
00:15
I'm not talking about the Knicks home opener.
00:17
That was also terrifying.
00:18
But the Trump campaign hosted a rally and it featured a roast
00:24
comedian that performed a series of jokes that were targeted at
00:27
Latinos. Let's take a look at it and these Latinos,
00:30
they love making babies too.
00:32
Just know that they do.
00:34
They do. There's no pulling out,
00:40
They come inside just like they did to our country.
00:43
There's a lot going on like I don't know if you guys
00:44
know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in
00:48
the middle of the ocean right now.
00:50
Yeah, I think it's called Puerto Rico.
00:55
the crowd enjoyed it.
00:57
I think this moment highlights the type of campaign.
01:00
Trump has been running where it's full of racist rhetoric and fear
01:04
mongering against Latinos and immigrants.
01:06
Yet since 2016, Trump's popularity in the Latino community has grown
01:10
So today we have Paula Ramos on the show to talk
01:13
about Trumpism in our community and what that means for the future
01:16
of the country. Yeah.
01:20
Thank you for joining us.
01:21
I'm a big fan and you know,
01:22
from the vice documentaries,
01:24
I used to watch those of Ton,
01:25
all your work with MS NBC and your new book Defectors,
01:29
The Rise of the Latino Far,
01:31
right? And what it means for America.
01:33
Thank you again. Thank you so much for having me.
01:35
I'm so excited to do this as a Latino.
01:37
It's like family members,
01:38
friends, these people are immigrants.
01:40
How are they still able to listen to this,
01:43
you know, like hateful rhetoric and then lean into voting for
01:48
you know, Donald Trump.
01:49
Trump is if you have a Republican presidential candidate that every single
01:54
day is instilling so much fear in this country,
01:57
right? Really getting so many Americans to believe that immigrants are
02:01
fundamentally threatening your culture,
02:03
your values, America.
02:05
Then I understand how that fear is very contagious,
02:08
right? I always say this just because we're Latinos and the
02:10
descendants of immigrants does not make us immune to feeling those things
02:14
or feeling that fear.
02:15
Now it's a very visceral feeling.
02:16
The second thing is,
02:18
you know, there are a segment of Latinos that have assimilated
02:22
a lot and that do genuinely feel I think far removed from
02:26
their like immigrant story or their immigrant roots.
02:28
And so when Trump says things like send them back,
02:31
they just don't necessarily see and association between themselves and that like
02:36
immigrant store. So I think that's another thing that maybe helps
02:39
explain it. This country does have a tendency to discriminate even
02:42
amongst the most American of Latinos,
02:44
right? Like the border,
02:46
right? In the last eight years,
02:49
there has been an increase,
02:50
an eight year increase in the anti Latino hate crimes.
02:53
And they specifically spike when mainstream media in the country is fixated
02:59
the invasion the caravan,
03:00
the fear there is that there are some Latinos that simply do
03:03
not want to be lumped in with immigrants because specifically of the
03:07
way that America then tends to criminalize all of us.
03:10
Something that Trump is constantly talking about is these mass deportations.
03:15
What do you think that's going to look like we have a
03:18
glimpse of it from Arizona,
03:20
right? Like in 2010 under Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
03:25
that gives you a sense,
03:26
right? As so many Latinos and immigrant families were literally being
03:30
racially profiled. He will literally deputize local law enforcement to act
03:36
as immigration enforcement, right?
03:38
And so what this means is that your local police could literally
03:41
go house by house knocking on doors and really trying to determine
03:45
who is undocumented and who isn't.
03:48
What he has also said is that he would even invoke right
03:50
The military aim to go after certain nationalities.
03:54
We know that they want mass raids.
03:56
We know what that looks like already.
03:57
We know that they want detention camps.
03:59
And so I think we're staring at a problem that is no
04:02
longer like an immigration problem or a Latino problem.
04:05
It will be a huge American problem where American families will be
04:10
separated and where we will see self deportations against and where inevitably
04:15
all of us, regardless of whether you have documents or not
04:18
whether you are a white Latino or brown Latino and no
04:21
one will be immune from,
04:23
from the racial profiling that will inevitably happen.
04:26
Paula. Your book did a great job of explaining how Latinos
04:31
right? Extremism. Can you break down why Latinos might be
04:35
drawn to Trumpism? There's a tendency to like,
04:38
Like look at Latino voters today and just think of ourselves as
04:43
this more sort of like Americanized assimilated voting block.
04:46
But I think one of the things that I found out what
04:49
the scholars show you is that at least 70% of people that
04:52
come to this country from Latin America are carrying some form of
04:56
trauma. One of them is this idea that we are carrying
04:59
a lot of racial baggage from Latin America,
05:01
internalized racism and colorism.
05:03
A lot of the things that are uncomfortable to talk about that
05:06
we learn in Latin America.
05:08
The other factor that we're also carrying is sort of this traditionalism
05:12
right? And really understanding how the weight of colonialism impacts
05:15
the way that we sort of shape our moral values on our
05:18
moral compass. And then lastly,
05:20
it's this idea of the actual like political trauma,
05:23
not like why we have this very complicated relationship with authoritarianism.
05:27
When you put all of these things together,
05:30
when you really think of how complicated our history is in Latin
05:34
then that helps explain some of the kind of weird things that
05:38
we're seeing in American politics now,
05:39
right? Such as like,
05:40
why is Trump doing so well with some Latino voters?
05:44
A lot of your book also talks about how the Latinos are
05:48
drawn to the Far Right movement because of a sense of belonging
05:51
What do you think about platforms like me through that are
05:55
celebrating our complex, you know,
05:58
multigeneration, Latinidad. Do you think that's fighting against the myth
06:04
of assimilation? I wish I had a platform like this when
06:08
like when we were coming of age in this country,
06:10
right? Like I grew up again,
06:11
I loved it. Obviously,
06:12
I have a personal relationship with uni,
06:14
but I grew up thinking that,
06:17
you know, there were these like stereotypical images of what it
06:21
Know that as a woman,
06:22
I had to look a certain way,
06:26
kind of almost erased the idea of diversity around me.
06:31
And so I think to have a community like this one and
06:34
a platform like this one that normalizes diversity,
06:37
not only normalizes but celebrates it in such a like with such
06:40
pride and force. Like that's incredible.
06:43
Again, Paula, thank you so much for joining us.
06:46
I want to plug your book again.
06:49
you know, it's a bit heavy,
06:50
little, little heavy.
06:52
Yeah, but it's important and I urge everyone to read it
06:56
So thank you again for joining us.
06:57
Thank you so much for having me.
Series