The rebranding of the Trump campaign’s official Latino outreach organization from “Latinos for Trump” to “Latino Americans for Trump” is the latest example of former President Donald Trump exploiting the divisions among Latinos in the U.S. over who gets to call themselves American.
A 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that while 53% of U.S. Latino respondents “consider themselves to be a typical American,” that percentage rose to 67% with second-generation Latinos and to 79% with third-generation or higher Latinos. The rise in “typical” American identity also aligns with later generations’ not being able to communicate well in Spanish, as 65% of third-generation or higher Latinos revealed in 2023. Pew has also noted these later generations are also less likely to identify as Hispanic or Latino, with 50% of fourth-generation or higher individuals with Latino ancestry not identifying as Latino or Hispanic at all.
While 53% of U.S. Latino respondents “consider themselves to be a typical American,” that percentage rose to 67% with second-generation Latinos and to 79% with third-generation or higher Latinos.
Catering to this population is the biggest reason adding “Americans” to the Trump campaign’s Latino outreach organization made sense for 2024 and Republicans.
“It’s very important that we all understand that no matter where we’re coming from, we’re already American. Whether you’re African American, Latino American, Asian American, European American, wherever you come from, we are all American,” Jaime Florez, Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, told NBC News.
Still, such moves will just drive more wedges into an electorate estimated at 36.2 million eligible voters this cycle.
As I wrote after Trump’s controversial interview with Noticias Univision last year: “There are plenty of Latinos who see privilege in their American citizenship, enough to the point that it creates real division. Battling Biden to a draw among Latino voters would be more than enough for Trump, and concentrating his pitch on some groups may be more effective than a ‘one size fits all Latinos’ approach.”
Fittingly, Berkeley law professor Ian Hanley López told The New York Times that the “Latino Americans” rebrand “constructs a border wall right through Latino communities, allowing some to feel esteemed as Americans while simultaneously encouraging them to believe others don’t belong, as the wrong sort of immigrants. This shift also drags back Latinos 100 years.”
He’s not wrong. The League of United Latin American Citizens campaigned to remove the “Mexican” label from the census and play up American whiteness in 1930. Latino conservatives have always claimed that the push to focus identity on origin countries and Spanish language is anti-American. The “good” Latinos are more American and speak English, and the “bad” ones are those who express pride in their culture, language and ethnicity. There is a case to be made that the future of the U.S. Latino community is an English-language one, which, at least in one way, bolsters the assimilationists.
Latino conservatives have always claimed that the push to focus on origin countries and Spanish language is anti-American. The “good” Latinos are more American and speak English, and the “bad” ones express pride in their culture, language and ethnicity.
A closer examination of who helps form the latest coalition of Latino Americans for Trump reveals Latino and Latina conservatives who have been supporting Trump for years and who have long argued that U.S. Latinos have been exploited by Democrats in the name of race politics and victimization.
Emphasizing Latinos as Americans might sound unremarkable to those outside the community, but there has always been a sector of Latinos who pontificate on the importance of freedom, democracy and being of the American fabric. The addition of “Americans” after “Latino” isn’t a new concept. The excellent 2013 book and documentary “Latino Americans” are better resources to understand the term and its history than a bunch of Latino conservatives supporting a candidate convicted of 34 felony counts.
It’s no surprise that Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas are Latino Americans for Trump, along with Goya CEO Bob Unanue, whose support for Trump in 2020 raised calls for boycotts of one of the Latino community’s most iconic brands. Not surprisingly, nine out of 11 elected officials listed as official endorsers for Latino Americans for Trump are from Florida, home to some of the staunchest Latino Republican support in the country.
But despite the criticisms the RNC took on this year for closing community centers aimed to connect more with Latino, Black, Asian and Native Americans, along with Trump’s ridiculous past appeals to Latino voters like his 2016 taco bowl outreach or his 2020 official salsa song campaign ad, this year’s Latino outreach efforts might have a larger, more receptive audience than they have previously had. As Pew noted this year, almost 40% of Latinos think the current situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is a serious problem. In April, an Axios-Ipsos poll noted that “the percentage of Latinos who say they support building a border wall and deporting all undocumented immigrants has jumped by at least 10 points since 2021.” Given that Trump is going all in on immigration politics, his campaign understands the opportunity. Some Latinos will always think they are better than other Latinos.
Nonetheless, concluding that Latino Americans for Trump as an outreach campaign will just radically erode Latino support for President Joe Biden and Democrats is too simplistic. New polling released last week from Voto Latino, shared first with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” shows Biden with a 59%-39% lead over Trump with Latino voters, which aligns almost exactly with the 59%-38% advantage he had with Latinos in 2020.
As Pew noted this year, almost 40% of Latinos think the current situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is a serious problem.
If anything, according to the Voto Latino poll, Biden might need to worry more about third-party candidates’ stripping Latino support from him than Trump and make sure his campaign more aggressively touts economic gains for the Latino community during the final months of the race. There is also the problem of younger Latino voters’ becoming more politically independent and not aligned with Democrats as in previous generations. Some of those very same young people, though, tend to embrace their own bicultural and bilingual identities that fly in the face of Latino Americans for Trump. Assimilation doesn’t necessarily need to be English-dominant. There is still a significant Latino population redefining American identity as one that is more culturally and linguistically inclusive.
Biden and Trump are showing clear contrasts with Latinos. The Trump playbook is based on institutional views that Latinos favor assimilation, the English language and buying into a more traditional American identity. Latino Americans for Trump is targeting Latinos who embrace those views. Yet, the history of Latino identity is complicated, manufactured at times to separate itself from whiteness and constantly evolving. That is a big opportunity for the Biden campaign, especially since Latino Americans for Trump offers nothing that we Latinos haven’t seen before.
