By Sarah Yáñez-Richards
MCALLEN, Texas.
- On the night of November 3, in a parking lot that smelled of meat and embers minutes from the border with Mexico, Juan Rodriguez notes that it is the first time he has voted in a long time.
Several Republican voters had gathered in this space to see the counting of the first votes and now they were preparing their dinners on grills.
[Follow minute by minute the presidential race in the US 2020]
"I did not vote for Trump in 2016," recalls Rodríguez, "although I supported him, I stayed home."
This time, Rodríguez
did vote for the current president, Donald Trump
.
Rodríguez describes himself as a Christian first and then as an American: he clarifies that although he does not deny his origins, he does not feel Mexican-American.
He was not the only one in Hidalgo County who went out to vote to re-elect the president despite not being a regular in politics.
In this county on the border with Mexico, where 92.5% of the population is Latino, according to Census data, support for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, increased 16.85%.
These elections received 61,286 more votes than four years ago in this region.
Hidalgo is not alone in this turn to the right that occurred in Texas in this election: it also happened that way in
El Paso County
, in the west of the state, and in Zapata County, two hours northwest of McAllen.
[Bittersweet taste among young Latinos who wanted to turn Texas into a Democrat]
The most drastic case is that of Zapata
, where Trump won and by 33 points of advantage compared to the last elections.
In Zapata, 94.7% of the inhabitants are Hispanic, according to the Census.
So far this century he had never voted for a right-wing candidate.
"I am a Republican by beliefs and biblical points of view, so I voted for Trump," says Claudia Badillo in McAllen, who at age 29 exercised this right for the first time this year.
Next to her, sitting in the back of a truck, is María Badillo, who says that although she has paid a lot of attention to this campaign and has participated in caravans, she has not been able to vote for her candidate because she is not a citizen of the United States. States and only have a residence permit.
"I didn't see any reason to start the process, well, now I do, because I want to vote, maybe now I will," says the teacher.
He explains that one of the reasons he supports the president is because in December he
wants to be able to say to his students, "Merry Christmas!"
and not "Happy Holidays!"
, more inclusive greeting that is used in some more liberal regions of the United States.
Eva Arechiga and her eighty-year-old mother in a car outside a McAllen, Texas, polling station.
Sarah Yáñez Richards / Telemundo News
Despite the fact that Hidalgo County has been painted blue again and gave 58% of its votes to Biden, for the Democrats of the area this was a wake-up call.
Although it was a majority, it was a drop of 15.5 points compared to what Hillary Clinton achieved in 2016: 73.5% of the vote.
And that was already a drop of 24.4 points compared to 97.8% for former President Barack Obama.
[Results of the presidential elections in the United States 2020]
Trump's relationship with money
is another reason why Republicans in that area were encouraged to vote for him.
"He studied business and his father had so much confidence in him that he invested in him and he was able to become a millionaire to a billionaire, so he is going to help us in the United States and protect us," defends Eva Arechiga also from a parking lot, but from a McAllen polling place.
She came to vote on the morning of November 3 with her 84-year-old mother in a car covered in Trump propaganda.
The Latino vote is felt in the state of Florida
Nov. 5, 202001: 00
“I have been voting Republican since the age of 30, when God opened my eyes,” notes this 56-year-old Mexican-American.
Arechiga indicates that Trump has "not at all" been racist against Mexicans and compares the politician with former presidents Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.
For her part, Yira Aldape, a 20-year-old student, tells from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley that despite the fact that
in this area there are many foreigners in an illegal situation
- as in the case of their parents - and young people who are under the program of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA, for its acronym in English) -as is the case of his sister-, among Mexican-Americans who have citizenship there is a lot of support for the Republican Party.
[Results of the 2020 United States Senate Elections]
“When people here get citizenship and start earning a little more, many of them go to the Republican Party and it's very sad,” he says, “because you feel like your own people are being stabbed in the back. ”.
Aldape says he voted for Joe Biden in this election.
Aldape points out that
he sees
this change
more in second or third generations of citizens who are Latino
.
"Sadly, I've seen a lot of people that I've gone to school with, where we had a lot of emigration and DACA people, who have turned red, just because they started making more money."
