"Why Are So Many Latinos Obsessed With Demonizing Black Lives Matter? It's Complicated."

This is an article from October 5th — at WLRN (the Miami NPR affiliate) — that begins "Joe Biden is expected to win the Latino vote big. But not so big in Florida." With hindsight, we know that the big Latino vote win did not happen. There was, in fact, puzzling drop in Latino voter support for Democrats. Let's mine this article for some clues about why that happened. Remember, this is public radio:

Many Latinos who back President Trump bring the racial — and racist — complexities of Latin America to their attacks on the racial justice movement.... 

[T]his summer many Latinos started to loudly express contempt for — and falsehoods about — the Black Lives Matter (BLM) racial justice movement. For months, Latinos for Trump rallies — like one in Miami Lakes where an organizer shouted BLM “wants to tear down the Biblical definition of family!” — have been trumpeting bogus claims about the movement being anti-American. 

And then there are the really racist diatribes on Spanish-language media — like one disgorged recently by conservative Miami radio host Carines Moncada, a Venezuelan expat. On her show on WURN Actualidad Radio — a mainstream Spanish-language outlet –—Moncada told listeners, “Black Life Matters practices lo negro — witchcraft and devil worship — and wants to burn down your property and kill police officers.” She then added that a vote for Biden “supports that rape and anarchy.” 

Moncada did not respond to WLRN’s request for comment. But her demonizing rant against Black Lives Matter is not uncommon in South Florida — although it often has more to do with socialism than Satan. Like, for example, when Republican congressional candidate Maria Elvira Salazar tears into BLM. Salazar, a Cuban-American, is a former TV journalist challenging Democratic Miami Congresswoman Donna Shalala.

 Of course, we know now that Maria Elvira Salazar beat Donna Shalala.

[Salazar] regularly and falsely claims that Black Lives Matter controls Biden and the Democrats — and has turned them into “radical far-left socialists” like those in Cuba or Venezuela. Salazar’s so-called “evidence” is that a BLM co-founder once had her picture taken with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in New York. But she insists that’s sufficient “prueba,” or proof....

“Miami has been the place where I’ve been made most aware of being Black — by fellow Latinos,” says Danielle Clealand, a Black Latina who says she’s found many White Latinos in Miami will not speak Spanish with her because they don’t accept her, “as one of them.” Clealand now teaches Latino Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, but until this fall she taught at FIU in Miami-Dade for almost a decade. Clealand is a Black Puerto Rican, but her research — including an upcoming oral history — focuses on the Black Cuban experience in Miami and the U.S. 

She says the Latino attacks on Black Lives Matter don’t surprise her — because while racism runs deep in Latin America, Black activism is all too often an unsettling shock for many Latin American expats here. More, even, than for many racist White Americans. 

“Racism is hidden in Latin America to maintain the status quo,” says Clealand. “And so when you come here and you see, particularly now, Black activism in the streets, people cannot hide from it anymore. When you are confronted with this it creates a negative and racist reaction.” 

Clealand also notes that because Latino groups in Miami experienced discrimination themselves when they first arrived here, they believe that gives them a pass from being accused of anti-Black racism. “It emboldens them to think they could never be racist,” Clealand says. “The denialism is huge.” 

Another FIU scholar, Michael Bustamante, says it’s also “a deflection to label Black Lives Matter Marxist, communist.” Bustamante, a Cuban-American history professor, says branding Black activism as “communist” is how many Latino expats avoid having to acknowledge the similarities between their struggles in Latin America and Black Americans’ struggles here.... 

“A lot of the people who were galvanized by the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela were darker-skinned, poorer folks,” says Venezuelan expat political analyst Maurizio Passariello.... 

ADDED: Here's an NBC article from last June that explores the same theme: "Latinos must confront 'ingrained' anti-black racism amid George Floyd protests, some urge/White-presenting Latinos should use this time to reconcile with their privilege and acknowledge that black people are already part of their community, said a young Afro-Latinx."  Excerpt:

Jasmine Haywood, an Afro-Latina who has researched anti-black Latino racism, told NBC News.... "What Latinos need to realize is that our oppression is bound up and intertwined with the oppression of the black community... Until they are liberated, until they are free from injustices and oppression, we will never be liberated." Haywood said anti-blackness sentiments are "ingrained in our cultures"...

While Latinos largely acknowledge their ethnicity and African roots — dating to Latin America's colonial period, when mixing occurred among indigenous people, white Europeans, slaves from Africa and Asians — many still struggle to consider themselves as black. 

In Pew's survey, 39 percent of Afro-Latinos identified as white, while only 18 percent identified as black; even more Afro-Latinos (24 percent) said their race was "Hispanic" — which is an ethnicity, not a race....

Julio Ricardo Varela, founder of Futuro Media's Latino Rebels and a white-presenting Latino himself, thinks it is crucial that Latinos recognize racism in their histories, not just as a U.S. issue. "White-passing Latinos really need to come to terms with their privilege in the context of anti-blackness," whether they were born in the U.S., Latin America or the Caribbean, and they "need to just accept the reality that we also come from a racist society that is embedded in white supremacy," Varela said....