BY KAREN BOSSICK

The day after the 2024 presidential election many Americans were left wondering how so many of the 36 million eligible Latino voters living in the United States could have voted for a man who referred to Hispanics and Latinos in derogatory terms and promised mass deportations.

Paola Ramos was already on it, having written the book “Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America.” It was an NPR Best Book of 2024, and it earned her an invite to speak at the 2025 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference being held Saturday through Monday, July 19-21, at Sun Valley Resort.

Her research into how race, identity and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos has kept her on the forefront of talk shows even as she now delves into the growing tendency of immigrants to give up the American Dream.

“There’s been a tendency to see Latinos as a monolith who are mostly Democrats. In reality, we are an extremely, extremely complex community with a very complex history,” said Ramos. “We have a lot of baggage, a deep history of colonization, a lot of political trauma and that has led to Latinos who are pro-Trump. Some are even White Supremascists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and are members of the Proud Boys. The rise in Christian nationalism has also been a factor.”

Ramos herself is an American journalist who was born in Miami but grew up in Spain, the daughter of a Cuban mother and Mexican father--journalist Jorge Ramos. After earning a BA in political science and government and a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, she worked for President Barack Obama and as deputy director of Hispanic Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

She says that Trump’s strongman-ship and authoritarianism were among his appeals.

“A lot of Latinos flee from places where violence is the norm. El Salvador is a perfect example because of the bromance between Trump and El Salvador’s president. That country had a massive gang violence problem, and they got rid of it via a mass incarceration program that involved suspending several civil rights,” said Ramos, who lives in Brooklyn.

“Despite that, President Nayib Bukele remains extremely popular. We’ve been conditioned to believe that, when democracy feels slightly messy or when we feel threatened by violence around us, that we need strong men to take care of us. Strong men were necessary to suppress the rise of communism. And Trump offered that same message, making people believe that there was chaos and danger, that we were being invaded, and that he was going to save us from that.”

Polls show that the majority of Latinos did not think Donald Trump was talking about them when he was insulting immigrants, Ramos said.

“They disassociated. Now, they’re realizing that perhaps their calculation was wrong. And now they’re coming to terms with the fact that the Trump administration didn’t want to deport criminals and gang members but they also wanted to deport undocumented immigrants and legal immigrants.”

Latinos are one of the fastest growing segments of American society. Most were born in the United States, most speak English, and those who are under the age of 50 are disconnected from their immigrant roots and original immigrant story, Ramos said.

“But, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric, many feared we would always be lumped into immigrants and, so, many aligned themselves with Trump, trying to disassociate themselves from immigrants and prove they’re as American as anyone else.

“Trump is so good at pointing out that there’s an in and out group and he made a lot of Latinos believe they, too, could be part of the white club and not part of the club of criminals and gangs. Tribalism was weaponized to convert voters who were fearful of losing their place in American society, just as it was used with many white voters.”

Ramos recently followed a group of Venezuelans who self-deported from the United States to Costa Rico and the border between Panama and Colombia.

“Millions of people are rethinking whether or not they want to be here. And there is a growing number of Latinos who are leaving, a reverse migration pattern that’s happening,” she said. “One of the questions I’m asking is: What does it mean for immigrants to completely let go of the American Dream, to be so disillusioned that they no longer see any type of optimism or hope in this society and in the system that they make the decision to leave this country?”

Many of the immigrants Ramos has spoken to crossed the Darien Gap--a 66-mile stretch of impenetrable jungle and swamps home to deadly animals, drug traffickers and guerillas-- right before the election.

“To do that, you really have to be driven by a lot of hope,” she said. “Whatever you see in the United States has to be greater than risk you’re facing in the Darien Gap. They get close to the U.S.-Mexico border and they wait in limbo for months realizing that they are simply not wanted. Even those who made it to the United States legally kept telling me they were haunted by the idea that people like themselves—hard working men--could be criminalized and sent to El Salvador.”

Those from Venezuela were not convinced that life would be better for them back in their native country, Ramos said. Rather, they wondered whether the American Dream could be found elsewhere.

“Now, they’re saying, ‘We may go to Chile or Spain.’ I think that may be the second iteration of the story.”