Immigrant’s family divided over Trump
Amelia Gutierrez’s parents have one rule at the dinner table of their Discovery Bay home: Don’t talk politics.
Too many wisecracks about Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s “sleepy” persona and how Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is “unqualified” can result in the 15year-old losing her phone privileges.
As the daughter of a man who emigrated from Mexico, she said, it’s tough to keep quiet about a president she considers a bully. Her father, however, is different from the majority of Latino voters in at least one respect — he’s a steadfast supporter of President Trump.
Marco Gutierrez said a vote for Trump was the surest way to preserve the American dream he and his wife worked so hard to realize and make a better life for his daughter and her five siblings.
Amelia is the second oldest of the Gutierrez children, though her father said that his oldest son at 23 hasn’t expressed his political beliefs as strongly as his eldest daughter, who he hopes will someday see things his way.
“He’s fought opposition with fortitude,” Marco Gutierrez, 43, said of Trump. “He’s not afraid what people might say about him. He stays true to his message and himself.”
National exit polls have estimated that Trump won 28 percent of the Latino vote in November, after a campaign in which he promised to build “a great wall” along the Mexican border and said a U.S.-born Latino judge who was hearing a lawsuit against his company should be disqualified because he was “Mexican.”
For the Gutierrez family, the partisan divide between those who believe
“He’s fought opposition with fortitude. He’s not afraid what people might say about him. He stays true to his message and himself.” Marco Gutierrez, Trump supporter “I love my father so much . ... But his views are very ignorant, and I can’t really have a conversation (with him) because he sort of just knocks my ideas down.” Amelia Gutierrez, Marco’s 15-year-old daughter, who is anti-Trump
the new president will “make America great again” and those who consider themselves the resistance has become intimate and personal.
“I love my father so much. I’ll always love him — he’s my dad,” said Amelia Gutierrez, a ninth-grade student at Heritage High School in Brentwood. “But his views are very ignorant, and I can’t really have a conversation (with him) because he sort of just knocks my ideas down.”
Marco Gutierrez’s wife, Jennifer — whom he met in algebra class at Antioch High School — was born in the United States and has some Mexican heritage. She, too, voted for Trump.
She said she is trying to teach her daughter to respect the political process.
“We need to trust in our system, even if we don’t agree with all of his policies,” Jennifer Gutierrez said.
She added that there isn’t a single stance Trump has taken with which she disagrees.
Marco Gutierrez said his daughter, like many other children from immigrant families, doesn’t understand what their parents had to overcome to make it in the United States.
“I went through hell to become American,” said Marco Gutierrez, who emigrated from Hidalgo, Mexico, at the age of 17 with his siblings as legal residents.
His parents were already living in the United States and working as farm laborers when he moved with his three brothers and two sisters in 1991. Marco Gutierrez became a citizen in 2003 and said the process took a toll on him — having to live in a different country than his parents as a child and waiting 12 years before becoming a citizen.
Last year, he co-founded Latinos for Trump, an organization with nine board members that promotes the president and his policies on social media and through speaking engagements. He came under fire from some other Latinos in September when he said in an MSNBC interview that without strict immigration, “you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
After that, he said, two of his co-founders distanced themselves from Latinos for Trump. Even his daughter said she was embarrassed when her father would pick her up from school because her classmates would point and stare at the “taco truck guy.”
Marco Gutierrez used to be a real estate agent, but he lost his business in 2008 amid the housing-market collapse and his failure to meet certain federal regulations, resulting in him having to surrender his real estate license. Now he’s a real estate investor and consultant, and says he and his wife face financial hardships.
He said Trump’s business success is an example to immigrants to keep their eye on what should be their main goal: to make a better life for their children.
“The American dream is achievable in the United States,” he said. “You can be everything you want to be here. Once you achieve that, how to sustain it? That’s what Donald Trump is kind of like telling us: ‘Hey, we need to defend our American dream because we are losing it.’ ”
Regardless of being an immigrant or first-generation American, Latinos have favored the Democratic Party in every election since at least the 1980s, according to the Pew Research Center.
Marco Gutierrez said that before the election, he didn’t realize how different he and his daughter were in their political leanings. Now, he said he finds her opinions naive.
While Amelia Gutierrez is outspoken at home with her father, who clearly disagrees with her, she doesn’t always feel the need to share her beliefs outside of her home.
She said she tries to keep the Trump talk to a minimum with her classmates because their conversations generally focus on “girl stuff.” But she can’t help chiming in when she sees posts on Facebook and Instagram about the president’s latest executive order, Cabinet pick or tweet.
“Trump supporters and conservatives don’t need evidence,” she said. “I’ve compared them to vampires and then the sunlight is the facts. But not like cool vampires or the sexy vampires — they’re just like the old ones.”
Of course, Amelia Gutierrez’s life isn’t just politics.
She’s an Audrey Hepburn fan who dreams of one day becoming an actress. She spends her days mimicking dance moves she sees in music videos and listens to Beyoncé, Adele and Miley Cyrus on repeat.
But since the election, she’s become more sensitive to the realities that Trump’s policy decisions might have on her future with DeVos in a position to affect her education and the threat of funding being cut to Planned Parenthood.
And the next four years are likely to be a battle — not just nationally, but in the Gutierrez household. In the next presidential election, Amelia will be old enough to vote.
“My father says many times, ‘I’m still working on her,’ or, ‘She’s not there yet,’ ” Amelia Gutierrez said. “And that really hurts me personally, because I am not a project. I’m a human being, and I have different opinions and different values.”