The survival of modern American democracy, now threatened by authoritarian currents, is in many ways based on the premise that America’s minorities will rise together against despots like Donald Trump. Under this idea that the social fabric that supposedly unites Latinos – our past, cultural heritage, experience as immigrants – is incompatible with Trumpism. However, that assumption takes on an old and invented label – “the Latino community” – that designated as a community millions of Latin Americans of different origins and ethnicities who emigrated to the United States in the 20th century. Decades later, this land that once seemed strange to them is their home, and new generations of Latinos wonder if our identities, our values and our visions of the future can still be brought together under the same roof.
I am a first-generation Latina born in Miami, the daughter of a Cuban exile whose family fled Cuba and a Mexican immigrant. My parents were part of the massive immigration wave of Latin Americans to the United States after the 1960s, which radically changed the country. For years, the population [de Estados Unidos] born in Latin America went from less than a million in 1960 to almost 19 million in 2010. From the Cuban Revolution to the disastrous economic opportunities of Mexico, passing through the civil wars of Central America, millions of Latin Americans like my parents left their previous lives to find a new beginning in the North.
When I was born in 1987, the federal government had already coined an expression to classify this new, rapidly growing segment of people of Latin American descent. They called us “Hispanics” and, finally, “Latinos.” Ironically, while those words attempted to capture what distinguished us from other Anglo-Americans, they also condensed our diversity and our individualism, confining us to a term that was never prepared to foresee the future.
Since my parents came to this country in the 1960s, and since the early 1980s, millions of immigrants have become Americanized, slowly integrating into a country whose dark history with racism pushed many to believe that the American dream It was better reached in English. Gradually, Spanish accents morphed into Spanglish, Mexican flags displayed outside were accompanied by the colors red, white, and blue, and many immigrants gave birth to children with American-sounding names. Now that the post-1960s mass migration has stabilized and newborns, not immigrants, are feeding America’s Latino population, younger generations appear to be finding their home.
Some American Latinos are embracing multiple identities that may have once been repressed in their home country and taking pride in a diversity that supposedly reflects the future of the United States. For example, today more than 27 million Latinos identify as multiracial, a significant increase since 2010, when only three million identified with more than one race. Polls also show that identification as LGBTQ is higher among Latinos than any other demographic group, or that young Latinos are increasingly less religious or mobilizing for reproductive rights and in solidarity with the Palestinian movement. They may be Latino on paper, but they may also first identify as black, or as Afro-Latino, or as brown, or as queer, or simply as American.
However, other Latinos have rather chosen to emulate the white majority, progressively adopting trends that drive Trumpism. A greater number of Latinos voted for Trump in 2020, after his four years in the White House. Forecasts suggest that these numbers will continue to increase, largely because the Republican’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and messianic message seem to be finding an echo. Polls show that Latino Protestants increasingly support Christian nationalism.
In my reports I have reflected the way in which xenophobia slowly sneaks in through the back door into Latino homes. Instead of viewing immigrants with empathy or as a reflection of themselves, many criminalize them and see asylum seekers as an existential threat to their well-being. In fact, discrimination is not limited to those on the southern border. According to Pew Research, more than 40% of Latinos with darker skin color have experienced discrimination from other Latinos in the United States. This group may be Latino on paper, but it is also possible that they first identify as white, or mixed race, or simply as American.
During the post-1960 migration wave, newly arrived Latin Americans found themselves surrounded by unfamiliar faces who suddenly found a ground of understanding in their collective quest to belong in the United States. In this way, the terms “Hispanic” or “Latin community” woven the illusion of a population that would always be united by common dreams, a language and traditions. But decades later, what do the 62.5 million Latinos see in each other? Was it all just a myth?
Each generation has challenged and expanded the meaning of the labels assigned to us. However, the 2024 elections will be a true test of our unanimity, and will reveal whether the social fabric that once united us is capable of resisting the current division. Whatever the answer to this question, we will surely witness the beginning of a new and revealing chapter in Latin history. What label will we put on it?
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