EL PASO, Texas.– In August 2019, a young white supremacist entered an El Paso supermarket seeking to kill Mexicans with a semiautomatic rifle and minutes later he took the lives of 22 people and injured 26 others. election year the coronavirus pandemic was the main protagonist, Texans
did not forget this fatal incident when casting their votes at the polls.
“I always thought to remain a Republican.
Vote Republican.
But this time I opted for a Democrat, ”says DE, a Mexican who has been a US citizen for a quarter of a century and prefers to remain anonymous to avoid conflicts with her family.
The reason why this retiree decided to change parties was because
in the president-elect, Joe Biden, she saw a “hope”
that could translate into positive change for the Latino community.
And on the other hand, in the outgoing president, Donald Trump, to whom he gave the vote in 2016, he saw a “very racist” message that has made Americans see Hispanics “differently”, he says.
[These are the Latino counties where support for Trump grew the most in 2020]
Another key reason behind his vote, says DE, who moved to the United States in the 1970s, is that the Republican president tried to de-legalize young people who are covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, for its acronym in English.
“It is not fair that they study here, prepare and then return them to their country.
Let them stay here to produce, to work, to live.
Well, they can help a lot to benefit this country ", says DE
DE, a resident of El Paso, Texas, who four years ago voted for outgoing President Donald Trump, but this year was traded for Democrat Joe Biden.Sarah Yáñez-Richards
However, DE believes that Biden will not have easy things because
"he will have the inheritance of four years of racism"
.
Nor does he see possible that the Democrat can legalize 11 million undocumented residents in the country, as he promised during the campaign.
“It is something very difficult.
I don't think anyone believes it, but hey, he's going to try ”, he notes.
Sammy Lewis, who also resides in El Paso, tells a similar story.
He voted for the mogul in 2016 because he believed his term would boost the US economy, but the August 3, 2019 shooting changed his mind.
[How Oil Helped Make This Century-Long Border County Republican]
“The attacker basically said he did it for Trump.
So that was a big factor for me in these elections, ”he says.
Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, who lived in Dallas, published a manifesto in the days before the attack last August, in which he complained of an alleged "Mexican invasion," echoing Trump's words.
Latino vote contributes to Donald Trump's triumph in Texas
Nov. 5, 202001: 29
“I am Mexican-American, but I am not fluent in Spanish.
But I know that if I had been in that supermarket it would have been one more target because of the color of my skin, "says Lewis in reference to the tragedy that left 23 dead, including US citizens, Mexicans and a German (one person did not die instantly in the attack but days later).
It is not the first time that Lewis has changed parties, since in 2012 he gave his vote to Democrat Barack Obama.
The 20-year-old, who grew up in this border city, points out that
the issue of immigration did not influence him as much when it came to voting.
[This 19-year-old Latino is behind one of the most drastic turns in favor of Trump in the entire country]
“Of course it would be nice if [immigrants] were screened, to make sure no murderers enter the United States.
But most of the traffic is family
,
that is, the grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters of people who are already here, ”says
Lewis.
Although the blue party won in this region, not all the citizens of this county denied Trump their vote.
In fact,
in El Paso the Republican won 5.7% more votes
compared to four years ago.
In 2020, Trump achieved a higher percentage of support in counties in South Texas, with a majority of Latino voters, compared to 2016. Telemundo News
An example of this support is Adrián Estrada, who voted for the current president and believes that the Biden government will allow more immigrants without legal status to enter the country.
An idea that is not based on any of the official statements of the president-elect.
“[Biden] wants to open the borders more, although he said he would not do it during the debates.
I've seen his policies before, under Obama, and I don't believe in what he represents for the United States, ”
emphasizes Estrada.
[These are the immigration promises of Joe Biden, the new president-elect]
"I feel like my voice is not being seen or heard," lamented Estrada, who was born in El Paso and is the son of Mexicans.
He says he believes the president-elect is too focused on "pleasing" the left and forgets the "voters of the center."
Adrián Estrada, an El Paso resident who voted for Trump and thinks Joe Biden is too permissive with "the left."
Sarah Yáñez-Richards
According to Fernando García, founder and director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR), the reasons why some Hispanics in El Paso, who represent 82.9% of the county, voted for the Party Republican are a mix of several factors.
Among these are moral values related to religious faith, economic stability or fear of a possible implementation of supposedly socialist or communist policies.
On the other hand, García explains, the reasons why Latinos opted to vote for a change were the exclusion of Latino communities in the response to the COVID-19 crisis, the increase in racism towards the Mexican community and the need to change immigration policy at the border.
The mobilization of Latinos helped skyrocket participation in Texas.
Your vote was not unanimous
Nov. 5, 202000: 20
“Even the Hispanic conservatives who voted for Trump did not do so because of Trump's immigration policy, but for the other reasons.
There is a consensus.
The Latino community is demanding a change in immigration policy, "underlines the activist, who believes that the Republican president based his statements about El Paso on" virtual realities "and a" promotion of a generalized distortion of migration and the border. "
"The great challenge [for the new government] will be how to rebuild the narrative that we have on the border," he says.
Garcia recalls that Trump came to El Paso to declare
"war on immigration" noting that this place was an "emergency zone and zero tolerance."
And it was also here in El Paso that, according to the CEO, "unfortunately, Trump's narrative of white supremacy, of racism, had an extremely serious consequence," in reference to the 2019 attack.
“This Administration has war technology, drones, helicopters, all of that is on this border.
And the question then is, who is the enemy?
and what is war?
... At the end of the day, all this paraphernalia has to do with a war against immigrants who come from Latin America ”, he emphasizes.
[Biden has promised to stop Trump's border wall, but would clash with demands to dismantle it]
The head of the BNHR explains that migration policies in this region have been a key point in the country's politics for two decades regardless of the party, but that this was the first time that these measures took a "racist and supremacist tinge."
Fernando García, founder and director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR, for its acronym in English), in El Paso in November 2020. Sarah Yáñez-Richards
According to García, this fact was not only seen in the shooting last year, but also in
the appearance of militias
that began to detain illegal immigrants or build their own wall in the middle of the desert thanks to private donations.
“We expect that in the first three months of the Biden Administration a series of executive actions will begin to take place before legislative issues and those measures have to begin to undo and eliminate all the executive actions that Trump did,” he says, “starting with eliminating the Refugee rejection program ”.
García adds that thousands of families currently live in subhuman conditions on the Mexican side of the border due to this policy.
[What's behind Trump's rise in popularity with Texans?]
García also wants the blue party, after taking the White House, to reaffirm
support for young people with DACA, also called dreamers, and withdraw the emergency declaration in the region.
This measure has led to the use of the resources of the Department of Defense of the Army to continue building the wall, a monument that in his opinion only serves to "represent a symbol of the worst of Trump's policy."
In the legislative, García hopes that there will be a change in a possible immigration reform.
Biden, who was vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2016, promised this during one of the presidential debates, but it could be difficult to deliver if the Democrats do not win a majority in the Senate.
Lessons from the Obama term
"There is no argument [as to why the Democrat was so tough on illegal immigration]," laments Cesar Blanco, a member of the Texas House of Representatives and a newly elected senator from the state.
"As a Latino that was something that disappointed me a lot."
César Blanco, member of the Texas House of Representatives and state senator-elect, in front of the memorial to honor the victims of the El Paso shooting in November 2020 Sarah Yáñez-Richards
Blanco says it is also
clear to him that the Republican Party in the last four years has launched an "anti-immigrant" and "anti-Latino" message
and says he is encouraged that Biden has signaled changes in migration policy in his first three months.
The senator-elect emphasizes that he is comforted to see that Biden is appointing Latinos to high positions in the White House, such as the Cuban-American Alejandro Mayorkas, nominated as Secretary of Homeland Security.
"It's something we haven't heard before from other presidents," he says.