Down in Latin America, we see the rise of "The Trump Latinos" or right-center candidates who want to do business with the U.S.
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As a boy growing up speaking Spanish in a Cuban home, my parents would listen to this wonderful musical group from Argentina, i.e. "Los Cinco Latinos" or translated to Five Latins. They sang their own material and wonderful Spanish versions of The Platters. One extremely catchy tune was "Quiereme siempre" (Love me Always), one of my mother's favorites. It's one of those wonderful romantic songs from that era.
You ask why Latinos and not Hispanics? That's what they used to call us before we became Hispanics for the Census Bureau.
Down in Latin America, we see the rise of "The Trump Latinos" or right-center candidates who want to do business with the U.S. They want to join the Trump-Rubio parade and fight criminal gangs and support a tougher hand with criminals. They want to be tough, i.e., "hombre fuerte" like Trump.
"Latin America's Many Trumps" by Daniel McCarthy explains the situation rather well:
Latin America is turning right, and it's a vindication for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In some ways, the Cold War never really ended in the Western hemisphere: Socialism has haunted the nations of Central and South America long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the same Cuban regime the Soviet Union propped up for decades remains in power to this day.
The hard left thought it had cemented control over Venezuela, too, thanks to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro -- until American forces snatched Maduro right out of his bed back in January and took him to New York to stand trial.
Yet most of our neighbors to the south are not ruled by dictators. Instead, elections in Latin America have swung back and forth between left and right.
Only now they're all swinging to the right, as the region's biggest nation dramatically illustrated last weekend. Brazil is now the scene of the greatest right-wing comeback since President Trump's own reelection two years ago.
The swing to "Los Trump Latinos" is more than ideology. In other words, I don't think Latin American voters are voting for this guy or that guy based on socialism over capitalism. This is all about security and keeping my small business and streets safe. It's about not worrying about your teenagers going out on Saturday night and getting kidnapped by gangs. Or having a cartel member drop by your "bodega" requesting money for protection from rival gangs. It's about locking up animals who commit horrific crimes for the hell of it. Everybody is looking at El Salvador and saying, why not here?
Time will tell if "Los Trump Latinos" can govern. So far, they are off to a good start, as we see in Colombia, where the new president is not messing around with criminal elements.
As a Colombian friend joked last week, we Latin Americans love "un hombre fuerte" (a tough guy) with a pretty First Lady. They elected lots of those!
Let's hope they succeed!
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