2020 race strains some Latino families, friends
Principles and values met with isolation and division
TUCSON — At 12 years old, Gael Juarez is eager about politics and President Donald Trump in particular.
On Monday afternoon, he proudly held a “Kids for Trump” sign that his mother, Geovanna Lopez, helped him make over the weekend, in anticipation of Trump’s campaign rally.
The sign caught the attention of numerous supporters. They smiled and even posed for photos with Gael and his sign as they waited Monday to get into the afternoon near the Tucson International Airport.
“I think by now it’s at least 100 people,” he said.
Gael, his mother, his younger brother Jibran, and a family friend were among hundreds of attendees at the Trump event. It also was the first political rally for Lopez, who immigrated to Arizona from Mexico, legally she pointed out, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
“Just go ahead and do things right. And that doesn’t make anybody a racist, it just makes you a law-abiding citizen, which is expected anywhere you go,”
she said.
With just two weeks until Election Day, Trump continued his courting of Latino voters such as Lopez during Monday’s rally in Tucson. Latino voters make up one of out every four registered voters in Arizona, but they are a significantly higher proportion of voters in border counties such as Pima County.
And Trump, who is trailing Democrat Joe Biden in the polls in Arizona, a crucial battleground state, needs to peel away as many Latino voters as he can to earn the state’s 11 electoral college votes on his way to securing a second term.
“As president, I have been delivering for our incredible Hispanic American community like nobody has ever done before,” Trump told supporters Monday.
“That is why we are going to win a record share of the Hispanic vote this November,” he later added.
Lopez was one of many Latino supporters who attended Monday’s rally in Tucson. Some, such as Carmen Noriega, Lopez’s family friend, are life-long conservatives. For others, such as Lopez, Trump won them over with his economic policies and opposition to abortion.
But one thing that Latino Trump supporters who spoke Monday to The Arizona Republic share in common is the blowback they face from family, friends and coworkers for their support for Trump.
Noriega lives in Sahuarita, but she grew up and lived in Nogales, a border city that is almost exclusively MexicanAmerican and overwhelmingly Democratic, as are most U.S. border communities.
She works as a court interpreter, but said that she has been shunned and has even lost numerous job opportunities when friends, coworkers and potential clients learned of her conservative political beliefs and especially of her support for Trump. But Noriega said she’s not willing to compromise her principles and values.
“If the condition for me to get a job is not my expertise, my professionalism, my work, then I don’t want it,” she said. “Do I need to be a Democrat? Do I need to be on the left? Do I need to follow Biden or whomever? Then I don’t want it.”
When it comes to family, the issue gets more complicated. For some Latino families, support for Trump has meant more isolation and division, although family relationships usually are not completely severed.
Noriega said she and her brother, who she described as being “very far to the left,” don’t talk as often anymore because of their opposing political views.
Anthony Romero, a Trump supporter from Tucson, attended Monday’s rally, also his first ever, along with his two children Keanu, 11, and Jeanalle, 10. He said the blowback from family members has been constant and relentless since he first voted for Trump in 2016.
“That’s why we kind of segregate ourselves from the family a little bit. We still go to family functions and stuff, but we don’t stay too long,” he said. “So for the most part, we’re in and out and that’s about it, before stuff starts getting stirred.”
Many Latino voters question how other Latinos can support Trump given his past divisive rhetoric on immigrants, as well his restrictive policies on immigration and the border.
Susan Alejandra Barnett showed up to Monday’s rally, too. She was one of a handful of people protesting Trump’s visit to Tucson. Barnett held two signs, one that read “love is love” and another more explicit one that said “(expletive) you and your guns.”
“My dad was deported as soon as Trump got elected, so I have a lot of hate for him,” she said. “He has called Mexicans rapists, criminals, drug dealers. And I just don’t think that’s something that I can agree with. I am a Mexican and I’m not any of those things, and neither was my dad.”