Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, by Paola Ramos
For some observers, Donald Trump’s gains among Latino voters in the 2020 election meant little. Hasn’t President Trump been constantly talking about building a “Great Wall” along the southern border? Didn’t he call Mexicans “rapists” and immigrants “animals”? Most Latinos still identify as Democrats, and most voted for Joe Biden in 2020. But Trump still made significant and surprising inroads, especially along the border. Take Zapata County, Texas, where 94 percent of the population is Hispanic, where President Trump turned a red light.
Journalist Paola Ramos was among those shocked. Her timely new book, “Defectors,” explores the rise of the Latino far right. She explains that the movement is not limited to white Latinos obsessed with European blood. She interviews Afro-Latinos like Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in organizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “It is clear that Latinos can also be white supremacists,” Ramos wrote. Mr. Tarrio, like many of the other extremists featured in Mr. Ramos’s book, insists that is not possible. “I’m pretty brown,” he once said. “I’m Cuban. There’s nothing white supremacist about me.”
Ramos calls such denial the “Latin American racial dance,” which deploys “our mixed backgrounds as a means of concealing our own racism.” Ramos describes herself as a fair-skinned lesbian Latina with a Cuban mother and Mexican father. As an adult, she writes, “I worshiped my white Spanish roots” and “erased my community’s indigenous past.” Ramos, now a former Vice News correspondent and MSNBC contributor, is an ardent liberal. “Defectors” is clearly a piece of advocacy journalism, aimed at her fellow progressives who have long assumed that the Democratic Party can take Latino voters, excluding Cuban Americans, for granted. It is something that
She argues that three forces draw some Latinos to far-right extremism: tribalism, traditionalism, and trauma. Tribalism manifests as internalized racism and a desperate desire to belong. Traditionalism refers to conservative Christian beliefs and rigid ideas about gender norms. Trauma stems from countries’ histories marked by violent upheavals and caudillos, or dictatorships of strongmen. All three elements, she says, flow from a colonial past that began with the Spanish conquistadors and continued through American intervention during the Cold War.
Ramos described tense interviews with people who were opposed to his politics, even though some were smart enough to “say all the right things.” She is speaking with a conservative evangelical pastor while members of his congregation stand nearby wearing MAGA T-shirts and holstered guns. She admitted that she was intimidated when she met Gabriel Garcia, a Cuban-American from Florida who livestreamed his participation in the January 6 attack. But Ramos was struck by how “timid, nervous and very fidgety” Garcia was in one-on-one situations. Tarrio also seems calmer and more thoughtful in private than his brash and loud behavior in public. Ramos’s empathy is formidable. She is frightened by the politics of exile, but at the same time, she is always curious to know more.
Her book is not innocent. Ramos is clear that no matter the subject’s motivations, nothing can justify acts of hate. However, she sometimes sees people she meets as mere victims. Ramos says that Latin Americans are “forced to absorb the essence” of Christian nationalism, whose “core tenets” are “imprinted” on “our psyche.” Their “special backgrounds have led many to believe that they must vote to advance their particular interests at the intersection of American individualism and whiteness, capitalism, and Christianity.” There is clearly some truth here. But her habit of choosing straightforward verbs and broad generalizations can flatten tangled dynamics into a neat story of cause and effect.
“At what point in the journey did the victim become the perpetrator?” Ramos wondered from the beginning. This is a deep question. As she suggests elsewhere, the people she speaks to see themselves as neither victims nor perpetrators, but as inhabiting a considerable space in between.
Ramos argues that most Latinos share his politics. “I believe that the majority of the approximately 64 million Latinos in this country are driven by a desire for social justice and equality. As Latinos, we believe that our ancestors… The journeys to the United States, though individually unique, were all prompted by the promise of greater freedom.” However, such blanket assessments contradict the fact that, as she later states, “we are flawed human beings with complex and painful histories.”
“Defector” attempts to navigate between two conflicting narratives. One is resolutely optimistic that “a history of resilience and adaptability has inspired Latinos to humbly abandon their instincts of oppression and domination.” The other is a series of encounters with people whose life stories suggest otherwise. She rightly rejects the assumption that Latin Americans are a “monolith.” But she keeps returning to her vision of a righteous, liberal Latino majority that seems monolithic.
Towards the end of the book, Ramos profiles several men who have become disillusioned with the right. One is a Border Patrol agent named Raul who voted for Trump in 2016 but was fired a few years later. It turns out that Raul is an illegal immigrant who was brought to the United States as a child.
“All along,” Ramos writes, “he was just a puppet of the system, not a person with a real voice.” Raul was “merely” a product of structural forces. It’s certainly a comforting suggestion, but as Ramos surely knows, everyone she speaks to is much more than that, for better or worse.
Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America | Paola Ramos Pantheon | 244 pages | $28
