Letters to the Editor: A ‘wokoso’ on the reasons more Latinos voted for Donald Trump

To the editor: Gustavo Arellano has an interesting viewpoint on the evolving politics of some Latino voters who favored President-elect Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. I guess that I fit into his category of the “wokoso.”

My mindset was created by the challenges of the Great Depression, the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, World War II, the labor movement and the racial attitudes behind signs saying, “No dogs or Mexicans allowed.” Added to this was the activism of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the murder of our idols John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Fast-forward to the post-baby boomer generations, and we have voters of Latino heritage influenced by the Reagan revolution, with its benign amnesty of the undocumented, recompense for incarcerated Japanese Americans and its underhanded dealing that brought about the Iran-Contra scandal. More Latinos have also been drawn into evangelical Christian churches with their Calvinist and dominionist theologies.

Finally, we can include the indoctrination of Fox News viewers and the ultra-conservative radio shows. This media ecosystem has the ability to convince viewers and listeners that a hot dog is filet mignon — and that Trump will be a great president.

Anthony Avila, Whittier

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To the editor: As a fan of Arellano, I read with interest his column on Latinos coming of age politically in the November election but came away with two concerns.

I don’t see how Latinos voting for Trump reconciles with the themes of Cesar Chavez’s 1984 Commonwealth Club speech. Arellano says Chavez spoke of a “California ‘dominated’ by the descendants of farmworkers, who would change things for the better and never forget where they came from, generations later.”

Regardless of why, voting in greater numbers for Trump and his vulgar, white-supremacist screeds seems to define forgetting where you came from.

Also, midway through the column, Arellano states that “2024 is the year that Latinos finally became Americans.” Yet in the rest of the column he never references them as Americans, rather always as Latinos. And, it’s done mostly in an us-versus-them context.

Identity politics is killing this country, and Arellano seems to be cheering the buy-in.

Mitch Paradise, Los Angeles