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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump Didn't Win the Latino Vote in Texas. He Won the Tejano Vote.
PoliticoZAPATA, TexasOf all the results from the November 3 election, few drew as much attention from national political observers as what happened in a quiet county on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Zapata Countys vote in a hundred years. But it wasnt its turn from a deep-blue history that seemed to be the source of such fascination but rather that, according to the Census, more than 94 percent of Zapatas population is Hispanic or Latino.
Zapata (population less than 15,000) was the only county in South Texas that flipped red, but it was by no means an anomaly: To the north, in more than 95-percent Hispanic Webb County, Republicans doubled their turnout. To the south, Starr County, which is more than 96-percent Hispanic, experienced the single biggest tilt right of any place in the country; Republicans gained by 55 percentage points compared to 2016. The results across a region that most politicos ignored in their pre-election forecasts ended up helping to dash any hopes Democrats had of taking Texas.
To many outsiders, these results were confounding: How could Trump, one of the most virulently anti-immigrant leaders, make inroads with so many Latinos, and along the Mexican border no less?
In Zapata, however, these questions have been met with mild chuckles to outright frustration. The shift, residents and scholars of the region say, shouldnt be surprising if, instead of thinking in terms of ethnic identity, you consider the economic and cultural issues that are specific to the people who live there. Although the vast majority of people in these counties mark Hispanic or Latino on paper, very few long-term residents have ever used the word Latino to describe themselves. Ascribing Trumps success in South Texas to his campaign winning more of the Latino vote makes the same mistake as the Democrats did in this election: Treating Latinos as a monolith.
Ross Barrera, a retired U.S. army colonel and chair of the Starr County Republican Party, put it this way: Its the national media that uses Latino. It bundles us up with Florida, Doral, Miami. But those places are different than South Texas, and South Texas is different than Los Angeles. Here, people dont say were Mexican-American. We say were Tejanos.
Zapata (population less than 15,000) was the only county in South Texas that flipped red, but it was by no means an anomaly: To the north, in more than 95-percent Hispanic Webb County, Republicans doubled their turnout. To the south, Starr County, which is more than 96-percent Hispanic, experienced the single biggest tilt right of any place in the country; Republicans gained by 55 percentage points compared to 2016. The results across a region that most politicos ignored in their pre-election forecasts ended up helping to dash any hopes Democrats had of taking Texas.
To many outsiders, these results were confounding: How could Trump, one of the most virulently anti-immigrant leaders, make inroads with so many Latinos, and along the Mexican border no less?
In Zapata, however, these questions have been met with mild chuckles to outright frustration. The shift, residents and scholars of the region say, shouldnt be surprising if, instead of thinking in terms of ethnic identity, you consider the economic and cultural issues that are specific to the people who live there. Although the vast majority of people in these counties mark Hispanic or Latino on paper, very few long-term residents have ever used the word Latino to describe themselves. Ascribing Trumps success in South Texas to his campaign winning more of the Latino vote makes the same mistake as the Democrats did in this election: Treating Latinos as a monolith.
Ross Barrera, a retired U.S. army colonel and chair of the Starr County Republican Party, put it this way: Its the national media that uses Latino. It bundles us up with Florida, Doral, Miami. But those places are different than South Texas, and South Texas is different than Los Angeles. Here, people dont say were Mexican-American. We say were Tejanos.
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Trump Didn't Win the Latino Vote in Texas. He Won the Tejano Vote. (Original Post)
brooklynite
Nov 2020
OP
MFM008
(19,803 posts)1. maggot wouldnt spit on them
if they were on fire.
TexasBushwhacker
(20,161 posts)2. A lot of the Latinx was lost in Texas because
of Biden saying we should taper off of fossil fuels, AND WE SHOULD. But for people who work in the oil fields, that sounds like it unemployment. Of course, jobs in the fossil fuel industry have been insecure since the 80s. They can count on being laid off periodically. If that's what they consider job security, I don't know what to say to them.