In his recent response to my review of Paola Ramos’s Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, Santiago Ramos (no relation) registers a few disagreements. But his criticisms actually bolster my main point: identities are complex, and cannot be reduced to simple labels. That’s why I agree with Ramos’s assessment of the wide, diverse spectrum of the country’s 60 million Latino voters, and called for a “rethinking of identity talk more broadly.”
That is also why I am concerned about the extent to which the so-called “alt-right” or MAGA style of conservatism has co-opted a reductive, essentialized Latino identity by manipulating tropes of tribalism, traditionalism, and trauma. Are all Latinos really so family-oriented, religious, sexually conservative, and fearful of communism and socialism that they must make common cause with Trump—a mendacious would-be autocrat who in many, perhaps more concrete ways is thoroughly opposed to their interests?
Like Paola Ramos, I grew up in South Florida, a place of contradiction and complexity if there ever was one. Yes, many Latinos there (and elsewhere) adhere to a Christian morality that “means decency, love, and sacrifice,” as Santiago Ramos notes. But contradictions also abounded within my community—as they do among any people—as many Latinos’ staunch, evangelical Christianity went hand in hand with their vocal racism and vicious homophobia. I can both appreciate and honor Latinos’ bonds of community and family, while rejecting the parts of Latino identity that the Trump campaign both essentialized and pandered to.
Far from presenting Latino identity as “currently diseased” or highlighting “pathologies of a toxic Latino culture,” Paola Ramos and I acknowledge that there is no singular static Latino identity or culture. Whenever I discuss identity with students, I prefer the plural “identities” to highlight the infinite complexities that surround how each of us, at any given moment, might situate ourselves on a grid with several intersections, some more rigid and prominent than others. For example, how do I identify myself? Male, writer, professor, Latino, San Francisco resident, lover of horror novels, etc. Identities are never settled; they shift depending on experiences, contexts, and self-stylization.
To thwart the weaponizing of simplistic identity tropes, difficult discussions of identity and the contradictions within Latino communities is necessary. “Latino” is a broad category, but it also contains specific tropes; conformity with those tropes shouldn’t be a requirement for membership, but it too often is. And that’s just what Trump and the Republicans exploited in the latest election.
Santiago Ramos seems to agree with the fluid nature of Latino identities by appealing to the late philosopher Jorge J. E. Garcia: “The Latino label was never meant to denote a fixed essence, racial or otherwise.” Unfortunately, just because the label wasn’t meant to be fixed does not mean that it hasn’t actually become so. This is why I seek—and I wish our political parties would, too—multiple visions of what it means to be Latino, paving the way for future unexpected visions. No single story can capture the variegated lives of any one person, much less a whole people.
My worry is that with the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement Latino identity has now become synonymous with evangelical Christian worship, conservative identity politics (of which the anti-trans stance is perhaps the most distressing and potentially dangerous element), and blind love of unfettered capitalism. Surely there is much more to Latinos than that, more to Latinos than Republican politicians seem willing to admit.
Paola Ramos and I have been calling attention to Latinos for Trump for quite some time. We have both interviewed and spoken to MAGA Latinos on many occasions, grappling in a serious way with their views and desires. “The shift [to Trump] was already evident four years ago,” writes Santiago Ramos. Actually, as Paola Ramos and I know well, the shift started long before the rise of MAGA. A tribal, traditional, and trauma-induced Latino identity has been ossifying in the United States for more than four decades. What’s increasingly alarming is how indistinguishable that identity and ideology appears to be from the self-understanding and political priorities of the white Evangelicals who defend Christian nationalism as the highest and only true form of civilization.