In the Jackson Heights neighborhood, in the Queens district of New York, is all of Latin America. Dominican barbershops, Mexican tacos, Colombian sazón, Venezuelan Santería, Guatemalan wineries, Ecuadorian flags, Uruguayan grills, stores that ship to the entire continent, and promises of visa solutions. Everything is written in two languages, sometimes just Spanish: speaking English is not much use to start any conversation.
Several of the more than 2.2 million Latin Americans in New York live here, part of the nearly 65 million in the United States (USA). Of that total 36.2 million are eligible to vote on November 5 between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and the partial renewal of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
There are four million more voters than in the 2020 presidential elections, 14.7% “of all eligible voters in November 2024, a new record,” indicates the Pew Research Center, which gathers data from an electorate that is contested by Democrats and Republicans with segmented messages and spots in Spanish. The race for the White House anticipates a close election, and Latin Americans could tip the balance for one side or the other.
“The Latino vote is very important, it is the fastest growing population in the US,” explains Jesús García, Mexican migrant, political editor of The Opinion Los Angeles and The New York Journaltwo of the oldest and most read Spanish-language media in the country. Very important and unstable, he adds: “They are always watching which candidate they can support depending on the election“It’s not because they voted Democratic once in a district that they’re necessarily going to do so again in the next election.”
Harris or Trump: identity or economy
“It’s time to vote on November 5, It is difficult to decide which of the two, Because of who we are because of Kamala, because of how the situation is, how it has been damaged, it makes me doubt, with Trump as president the economy improved a lot, we were fine. There is a large part of the community that has that same doubt,” says Vilma, a Salvadoran, who has a T-shirt stand on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights.
Vilma has been in the country for 20 years, Trump’s campaign statements against migrants are very much in mindparticularly Latin Americans, whom he accuses of “invasion” and promises a strong hand and mass expulsions. “Their expressions are not good since it locks all migrants in and we are all equal,” he says.
But the economy is bad and that affects it directly: “We work more and the money is not enough, the basic basket is through the roof, and we merchants suffer a terrible fall, especially at the end of last year and this year, and how is the insecurity, It’s harder to make an honest living in New York City these days.”
Vilma shares one of the main concerns of the American population as indicated in the Reuters/Ipsos study from mid-October, where 25% of the population affirms that the most important problem is the economy, followed by the threat to democracy and immigration with 21% and 13% respectively.
“Who is on the side of the people? The problem is for everyone, whites, blacks, Latinos“asks Vilma, who affirms that she will surely vote for Harris, although she still lacks information about the vice president candidate.
Convinced Trumpists
Roosevelt Avenue is crossed by subway line 7 that passes overhead and ends in Manhattan. Under the subway structures, Fernando, an Ecuadorian, has a phone accessories street stall: “Of course I’m going to vote, I’m going to vote red, for Trump, for many reasons, one would be the economy, another would be migration,” he says.
Fernando explains that he has relatives “who have been here for thirty years and do not have papers, and now the Government opened the borders and at least should check who enters and who does not, good people came in and if they are good, it’s good, and a lot of bad people came in, and they already have social security“They live in hotels, they receive money, and I have never received a cent from the Government.” Old migrants against new migrants.
He also accuses Venezuelans of insecurity: “They are making people look very bad for migrants“, he says, and “there are a lot of bad Ecuadorians too.”
Fernando is one of those They opt for Trump for economy and security, the promise of law and order. Others, however, do it for ideological reasons, particularly in the state of Florida, marked by Cuban and Venezuelan migration: “There we are seeing rhetoric about the country going to become communist, that the Democrats are leaning the US towards become a socialist, his speech has a lot to do with his own history,” García explains.
Trump won Florida in 2020 and The state is no longer considered a pendulum, that is, in dispute in each election and, therefore, with the possibility of defining the course of the contest, but as one stably in favor of the Republican party. The former president was there on Tuesday meeting with Latin American businessmen, where he accused Harris of being a “radical leftist lunatic” and “Marxist”, in keeping with the virulent discourse against the left typical of that Latin American political sector.
Win the vote
“The Latino community is diverse, the majority is made up of Mexicans, not all are migrants, many are of Mexican descent, there are Puerto Rican voters, a growing community of Central Americans, the population of the Dominican Republic has increased, which has particularly high political power on the east coast and in the New York region,” explains García. The last to arrive en masse are Venezuelans and Ecuadorians, who migrate by land through the Darién jungle that connects Colombia with Panama.
Those who can vote within this heterogeneous group have a trait in common: “They are the group that registers the smallest number of voters compared to other groups “The Latino vote has been called the sleeping giant, let’s see if it wakes up in this election,” says García.
59% of Latinos they voted for Biden in 2020according to the Pew Research Institute. The inclination of that vote could be particularly important in swing states with a significant Latino voting population, such as Arizona, a state bordering Mexico, where 63% voted Democratic in 2020, turning that historically red state towards blue.
There are two weeks left until the November 5 election, although voting has already begun early in several states, such as Florida and Texas. The survey average gives you a fragile advantage to Harris, in an electoral system where the majority of votes does not necessarily define the winner, but rather the total votes in the Electoral College do. Latinos, like the Jackson Heights community, will be part of the definition of who will occupy the White House starting in January.
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