Watching Donald Trump in New Mexico last week, saying, “We love our Hispanics,” with a crowd of cheering Latinos behind him, was a sharp disconnect from what we’ve seen at the border, and what we know has happened—or not happened—with Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico.
In Trumplandia, love looks and acts just like hate.
Anti-immigrant xenophobia and hate crimes are on the rise, culminating in events such as the massacre in El Paso, where, ABC News reported, “Patrick Crusius, 21, told investigators following his arrest that he allegedly set out to kill as many Mexicans as he could.” Trump’s rhetoric has ramped up his base into a frenzy, and a racist mass murderer heeded the call to kill. As Sen. Kamala Harris put it, “People ask me if Trump is responsible for El Paso — I say he may not have pulled the trigger, but he’s tweeting out the ammunition.”
Much of that hate is focused on Hispanics, no matter whether they were born here or immigrated to the U.S.
Take a look at the videos embedded in radio station WBUR’s commentary, “The Danger Of Speaking Spanish In Public.”
The irony in all of this is that the most widely spoken language in the Americas and the Caribbean is Spanish: “[A]bout 400 million people in the Americas speak Spanish as their first language, 247 million people speak English as their mother tongue, 204 million people speak Brazilian Portuguese, about 8 million people speak French or French Creole,” and the oldest continuous European colonial settlement in what is now the United States is St. Augustine, Florida—founded in 1565 by the Spanish.
Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote about that Trump rally for The New Yorker.
At a campaign rally in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, on Monday night, President Donald Trump had just finished a tribute to Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee—or “the woman in Michigan,” as he also referred to her—when he turned his attention to another person in the audience. This was Steven Cortes, a political consultant and occasional commentator on CNN, where he has been known to defend the President. (Trump has said that the network had fired Cortes, which does not appear to be the case.) Trump noted that Cortes “happens” to be Hispanic, and then proceeded to give an indication of the peculiar lens through which he himself sees the world. “I’ve never quite figured it out, because he looks more like a Wasp than I do,” Trump said. He was, at that moment, speaking against a backdrop of people wearing “LATINOS FOR TRUMP” T-shirts or waving signs bearing the same slogan; their placement, in view of the cameras, was an indication of the rally’s message. Some of them happened to resemble Cortes in ways that one imagines Trump meant; some didn’t, which is what one would expect, given the great diversity within the Latino community. Indeed, Trump’s comment would be baffling if its point were not so blatant: he has a particular picture of what “Hispanics” look like, and expects others to find it as perplexing as he does when life operates differently than the Trumpian Central Casting office in his mind.
In Rio Rancho, Trump made it clear that his Latino stereotype extended beyond any physical features to include matters such as citizenship, socioeconomics, culture, and loyalty. Still in raptures about Cortes, Trump continued, “There is nobody who loves this country more or Hispanic [sic] more.” He looked in the direction of Cortes and asked, “Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics?”—as if this were somehow a choice, as if “the Hispanics” were not as built into the definition of “the country” as any other Americans, and as if asking in that manner were not an act of ragged division. Trump reported back to the crowd, “He says the country! I don’t know, I may have to go for the Hispanics, to be honest. We’ve got a lot of Hispanics! We love our Hispanics! Get out and vote.”
Sorkin went on to point out something that Democrats need to pay much more attention to (my bold).
Trump was not wrong in boasting, as he did elsewhere in the speech, that he has a real shot with many Latino and Latina voters, particularly Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American voters—though, of course, he exaggerated, saying, “All for Trump!” Jonathan Blitzer has an incisive examination of why Trump has a chance with many of these voters in this week’s magazine. As he notes, Democrats, in their own way, may not fully recognize the politically diverse nature of the Latino community, as focused as some are on the Administration’s often reprehensible behavior at the Mexican border. But Trump, as he does, flattened away all nuance, claiming that he was on the verge of total victory with these voters next year. (His approval rating among Latinos nationwide is in the twenties.) As he presented the case, even if “the Hispanics” don’t vote for him because of his policies toward Cuba and Venezuela, they should vote for him because unemployment is low and because of what he brazenly claimed was their overwhelming support for his border policies. “Because the Hispanic Americans, they understand, they don’t want the criminals coming over the border,” he said. “They don’t want people taking their jobs, they want to have that security, and they want the wall. They want the wall!”
She links to an important read by Jonathan Blitzer, “The Fight for the Latino Vote in Florida: Immigration, taxes, and health care matter, but a foreign-policy issue has taken center stage,” which examines Republican targeting of specific groups of Spanish-speakers.
“Florida elections always come down to margins,” Frank Mora, a professor of politics at F.I.U., told me. The 2018 races for governor and the Senate were each decided by less than half of a percentage point. In South Florida, which has diverse and overlapping voting blocs, candidates try to win votes in sympathetic constituencies and limit the damage in others. In and around Miami, seven hundred thousand Cubans are eligible to vote, along with a hundred and sixty thousand Colombians, eighty thousand Nicaraguans, and some fifty thousand Venezuelans. “Foreign policy is intensely local in South Florida,” Mora said. Most of the diaspora communities in the state have fled socialist dictatorships. Republicans, and especially Trump, have seized on this fact to relentlessly attack left-wing populists in Central and South America. “The Trump Administration’s Latin America policy has become all about Florida,” a former State Department official told me.
Let’s examine some key data from Pew:
Since 1960, the nation’s Latino population has increased nearly ninefold, from 6.3 million then to 56.5 million by 2015. It is projected to grow to 107 million by 2065, according to the latest Pew Research Center projections. The foreign-born Latino population has increased to nearly 20 times its size over the past half century, from less than 1 million in 1960 to 19.4 million in 2015.were in 1960 (5.5 million)
Too often the use of the “U. S. Hispanic” demographic category masks worlds of difference.
The U.S. Hispanic population is diverse. These nearly 60 million individuals trace their heritage to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America and to Spain, each with distinct demographic and economic profiles. [...]
The vast majority of Latinos are U.S. citizens. About 79% of Latinos living in the country are U.S. citizens, up from 74% in 2010. This includes people born in the U.S. and its territories (including Puerto Rico), people born abroad to American parents and immigrants who have become naturalized citizens. Among the origin groups, virtually all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Spaniards (91%), Panamanians (89%) and Mexicans (79%) have some of the highest citizenship rates, while Hondurans (53%) and Venezuelans (51%) have the lowest rates.
When we try to predict and poll this demographic category that is dubbed “Hispanic” but includes people of all races and many ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures, we wind up with confusing and inaccurate results.
The second half of this month and the first half of October are officially designated National Hispanic Heritage Month.
Each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15, by celebrating the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
The observation started in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson and was expanded by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on September 15 and ending on October 15. It was enacted into law on August 17, 1988, on the approval of Public Law 100-402.
The day of September 15 is significant because it is the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16 and September18, respectively. Also, Columbus Day or Día de la Raza, which is October 12, falls within this 30 day period.
But what does “Hispanic” actually mean? Who does it include or erase? How often do you hear someone talk about “blacks and Hispanics” as if these are distinct racial groups—which reminds me of the phrase “minorities and women.”
This short, five-minute documentary, #WeLaGente, illustrates visually the broad diversity of who is being spoken about when the word “Hispanics” is used.
My own personal connection to all of this is two-fold. With the surname Oliver-Velez (Velez is my husband’s surname, and he is a black Puerto Rican) and my movement history as part of the Young Lords Party, I am often mistakenly identified as a Puerto Rican Latinx. As such, I am frequently a target of haters, both online and in public, whether in a doctor’s office or standing on a checkout line at the supermarket. In the last two years since Hurricane Maria, I’ve written over a hundred stories here at Daily Kos about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. Ofttimes, in the comments section, people repeat the same queries and assumptions:
How could anyone from Puerto Rico be a Republican or vote for and support Trump?
Why would “people of color” vote against their own interests?
I answer:
“Puerto Rican” is not a race; it is both an ethnicity and a nationality, but Puerto Rico has a class hierarchy that is racialized, and leadership positions on both the right and left are held by predominantly white and not mestizo or black Puerto Ricans.
From the point of view of the U.S. government, however, historically, “Porto Rico” is “colored.”
As I wrote in 2017:
Bottom line — it’s racist. That goes for the lack of interest or coverage of the USVI too. U.S policies and attitudes toward our colonies — always viewed and treated as second or third class “coloreds” has been in place since we seized them.
The print posted up top is from January 25, 1899.
Print shows Uncle Sam as a teacher, standing behind a desk in front of his new students who are labeled "Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, [and] Philippines"; they do not look happy to be there. At the rear of the classroom are students holding books labeled "California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, [and] Alaska". At the far left, an African American boy cleans the windows, and in the background, a Native boy sits by himself, reading an upside-down book labeled "ABC", and a Chinese boy stands just outside the door. A book on Uncle Sam's desk is titled "U.S. First Lessons in Self-Government".
The lesson to be learned here in 2017 is that Puerto Ricans will never get treated like nice white kids.
I’m borrowing and republishing the following segment from my Tuesday’s Chile commentary for Black Kos: Latinx, Afro-Latinx and Hispanic
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Hispanic Heritage Month” started on the 15 of September and runs through Tuesday, Oct.14. Many young Latinx are questioning what and who that name actually represents.
Isabelia Herrera writes:
First, let’s talk about the name. G. Cristina Mora, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American,” said the term Hispanic emerged both as a “fight for recognition” and an “administrative quandary.” After the 1970 census severely undercounted Latinx populations, the Census Bureau developed a Spanish Origin Advisory Committee made up of activists, academics and civic leaders to tackle the problem.
Soon, intense debates about how to address the issue emerged: Should the new label focus on commonality of the Spanish language? Should it center race? A shared experience of colonization? Some argued “Latino” too closely resembled “Latin American,” and preferred to distinguish themselves from a transient immigrant community. Others felt focusing the label on the Spanish language connected them too closely to their European colonizers. To complicate matters, there were generations of folks in New Mexico who embraced the term “Hispano”; these communities cherished both their Spanish and their Apache, Comanche, Pueblo or other Indigenous ancestry. “Even if they had never set foot in Spain,” Mora said, many claimed this part of their heritage as a mechanism to avoid discrimination, particularly during the Jim Crow era.
“Hispanic” was presented as an English-language parallel to the New Mexican term “Hispano,” one that could be reframed into a catchall to include dozens of nationalities, races and identities. “Hispanic became the imperfect compromise,” and eventually became a census category in 1980, Mora said.
Since then, the word Latino (and, more recently, the gender-inclusive term Latinx) has become more widely adopted, calling into question the continued use of Hispanic in the federally observed commemoration. Janel Martinez, a multimedia journalist who started Ain’t I Latina?, an online publication that highlights black Latinas, said she doesn’t refer to the month by its official name at all, instead calling it Latinx Heritage Month. But she says the issue goes deeper than terminology.
“Though these ‘all-inclusive’ terms were designed as umbrella terms to unify and reflect a shared culture, it’s clear not everyone is included,” Martinez said. “Those of us who often exist on the outskirts of the definition, such as black and/or Indigenous Latinxs, we’ve created our own safe spaces to celebrate ourselves during the month and beyond.” Martinez also added that she’d like to see the month include conversations about “how equitable and inclusive spaces are being created to center” the existence of black and Indigenous Latinos and “issues that disproportionately impact us.”
That conversation is echoed in “The Problem With Latinidad: A growing community of young, black, and indigenous people are questioning the very identity underpinning Hispanic Heritage Month,” by Miguel Salazar:
Historically, the forging of this ethnic identity has been understood as a necessity in the face of white supremacy and anti-Mexican Juan Crow laws. In response to recent events, it’s been useful for raising awareness of migrant family separations, Washington’s insistence on militarizing borders in Mexico and Central America, and mass shooters warning of a “Hispanic invasion” of the United States. Even so, its most vocal critics, who are often young and black or indigenous, have not minced words in their critique of what they see as an exclusionary identity fabricated by—and for the benefit of—white and mestizo elites and the American political class.
I spoke about the recent rejection of Latinidad with the journalists, organizers, and thinkers at the forefront of this conversation. We talked about what determines who is allowed to claim the term, what purpose it serves, and whether the identity is useful as a category anymore.
This op-ed by Melania-Luisa Marte expresses her strong thoughts on the subject.
Despite the fact that dictionaries regularly add terms that we use colloquially – zoodles, hangry and TL;DR to name a few – we still do not have the term Afro-Latinx in the dictionary. For about a year, I have petitioned for the inclusion of this very important and necessary term to several dictionaries.
I first came to the realization of this oversight when doing research on a poem about Afro-Latinidad, which I hoped would educate folks on the meaning behind the term. Instead, I was saddened to learn that dictionaries, such as Merriam Webster and Dictionary.com, do not officially recognize the word.
While the term Latina is a recognized term in most major dictionaries, this is not enough for Afro-Latinxs. It doesn’t do enough to encompass a large group of people who are at the intersection of two identities. When I say I am Afro-Latina, I am saying I am a Black woman with roots in Latin America and Africa. I began embracing the term Afro-Latina about five years ago when there was little conversation around Afro-Latinidad in mainstream media. Through social media, there were many of us creating spaces and using our platforms to celebrate our stories and our culture.
Latinidad has a history of being anti-Black and rewriting history to diminish the impacts colonialism, slavery and white supremacy have had in Latin America. Many of this stems from economic and political inequalities that have left white Latinxs with more power than Black and Indigenous Latinxs. It is important to understand that although many folks interchange race with ethnicity, Latino/a/x is not a race. Latinxs can be white, Black, Asian or Indigenous. Because of this, it’s important to center those who are not equally represented in media.
Not only are we always left to hyphenate to fit within the margins of a term that does not celebrate us, but we are also reduced to screaming into an empty room about the ways in which Latinidad is complicit in our erasure.
Last year’s article in The Root by Roberto Carlos Garcia deserves a reread if you haven’t seen it. It is both critical and supportive.
Congratulations, mi negra! It finally happened. Today you looked into the mirror and said, “I’m black. Soy negra. Vaya.” You embraced your black or brown skin, your curls and kink. No small feat for a Dominican. You’re ready to forgo the centuries of Dominican anti-Africanism and embrace your brothers, sisters and cousins of the African Diaspora.
The reality is, there is no “black coming-out party.” Soon it will begin to sink in that everything black, everything African Diaspora, is appropriated, commercialized, monetized and exploited. Arguably, the term “Afro-Latinx” is suffering from “gimmification.” Within our community, there are Afro-Latinx who pretend black when it is convenient and then try to blend right back into anti-blackness when it is not. The colonial trauma and legacy of self-hate continues to morph into stranger things.
Thankfully, many Afro-Latinx are sharing their stories. Read this excerpt from Yesenia Montilla’s poem “The Day I Realized We Were Black,” from her collection The Pink Box:
because my godparents were Irish-American
because I had suppressed my blackness
because my brother shook me when I told him he was stupid we were Latino
because he had missed his Jersey to Port Authority bus
because he was walking to the nearest train station and lost his way
because he was stopped by the police
because he was hit with a stick
because he was never given the right directions even though he begged
because trash was thrown at him from the police cruiser’s window as he walked
because he was never the same
because we’re black because we’re black and I never knew I was twenty-two
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) uses the term Afro-descendants.
Despite the fact that around one in three Latin Americans is of African descent and that international and national legal frameworks protect human rights, members of this population remain marginalized and face major obstacles to the exercise of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Afro-descendants encounter serious obstacles in accessing health and education services and obtaining housing and employment. Most live in poor urban dwellings with precarious infrastructure and are more exposed to crime and violence. The under-representation and low participation of both women and men of African descent in politics demonstrates the evident barriers faced in gaining access to political power structures and playing active roles in the design of public policies to reduce discrimination.
They also speak to the plight of indigenous peoples.
In Latin America there are more than 800 different indigenous peoples accounting for close to 45 million women and men or around eight percent of the region’s population. Their immense socio-demographic, territorial and cultural diversity ranges from around 200 peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact in countries like Brazil, Ecuador, Peru or Paraguay to many who live in large urban settlements such as in Mexico City or Quito.
Despite the progress made in terms of promoting indigenous peoples’ participation in policymaking and the political sphere, they have been largely left out of the region’s social and economic strides of recent decades. These populations remain among the least healthy and educated populations and suffer disproportionally more from the effects of climate change and natural catastrophes.
In spite of many challenges, Latin America has gone through an unprecedented mobilization of indigenous peoples in the past 20 years, but their political participation, particularly among women, is still low, according to a UNDP report which assesses the six countries with highest percentage of indigenous peoples and greatest progress in political participation—Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.
As I pointed out in Black Kos, just as “Negro History Week” evolved into “Black History Month,” perhaps the term “Hispanic” will be retired.
No matter what term is used, it will not eliminate hate-motivated actions from bigots and supremacists, some of whom currently hold elected office or are prominently featured in the media.
The task of changing this falls on all of us—no matter our designation.