The award-winning journalist delves into the reporting behind her new book, Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America; reflects on how being a Latina lesbian informs her storytelling; and shares what her grandfather’s life and death have taught her about the pursuit of individual freedom.
Follow Paola @paoramos on Instagram and find her new book here.
Alicia Menendez : My friend Paola Ramos is one of the most fearless storytellers of my generation. You've likely seen her work on Vice, on MSNBC, on Telemundo, and now on the pages of her deeply reported new book, Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means for America. Paola and I talk about how race and trauma weave into our politics, how her own identity as a Latina, as a lesbian informs her reporting, and what she learned from her grandfather about the value of curiosity and the pursuit of personal freedom.
Paola, congratulations.
Paola Ramos : Thank you. Thank you so much.
Menendez: Paola, just given how private you are, I was really impressed and surprised by how much of yourself you wove into Defectors, and you begin by telling this story about your own acceptance to Barnard and receiving this package from the university where they're really talking to you as a person of color, which given your upbringing isn't how you thought of yourself. Take me back to that moment and the moments that follow, that really begin to shape your own sense of identity.
Ramos: Yeah, I mean, so as you know, obviously my father's Mexican, my mother's Cuban. I was born in Miami, but since I was two years old, my mom and I moved to Spain. And so, so much of my identity in Spain was built around what it means to be a Latino in Spain, going to school, idolizing Columbus, going to school in an era where being Spanish was, as a teenager, the coolest thing anyone could ever tell me. And so when I moved to Miami at that age, I'm 17 years old, I applied to different American schools. And so once I get accepted into Barnard, the first communication correspondence I've had from them is this envelope, as you mentioned, that says, "Yes, you got accepted and you are a student of color."
And so I remember in that moment looking at my mom and literally telling her, "I think they made a mistake. I think when they're referring to Paola Ramos, I think they're thinking of someone else." Because the idea of what it meant to be Latina, what it meant to be the daughter of immigrants was not something that I was ever really conscious of in Spain or in the environment that I grew up in. It wasn't until I leave Miami going to Barnard in New York City, walk into this college campus, it is in that moment that I start really creating and building an identity around what it means to be a Latino in the United States. And then suddenly I'm understanding like, oh, wait a second, my English is actually not good enough. Oh, wait a second, I'm actually not as American or as quote, unquote, "Spaniard" as I thought I was. So it is in that moment that I start building this consciousness around what like Latinidad is supposed to mean.
Menendez: Right. And you acknowledge it's a slippery concept, a concept that is certainly being grappled with at this very moment. As I interpreted it from your retelling, what crystallizes it to you is that while you may see yourself a certain way, you are now existing in a context in which you are being understood in a completely different way in which you are otherized.
Ramos: Particularly when you grow up with such proximity to whiteness in the way that I did. Building a Latino identity around Europeanness, that was sort of my understanding of my identity. And so that is how I thought the world would see me in the United States. That is how I wanted to see myself walking into Barnard. Then suddenly, as I said, in Barnard College, in that moment is when I realized, wait a second, the country and these institutions and this school and others aren't seeing me the way that I am seeing myself, which was through this very, very, very white lens.
Menendez: One of the things you're very careful about in Defectors is this idea that some people treat the sway we are seeing in the Latino electorate as though it is an entirely new thing, as though there were never seeds of it planted in our history. And you talk about how anti-immigrant sentiment is visceral and tribal, and it transcends lines of race and ethnicity. Would you read for me from Our Historic Drive to Conform?
Ramos: Okay, so in fact, our historic drive to conform improve ourselves worthy of belonging in America can activate our own anti-immigrant sentiment as a means of reinforcing that we are in fact real Americans. The political scientist Benjamin R. Knoll began sounding the alarm on this issue in the early 2000s. Knoll, who at the time was a grad student at the University of Iowa, remembers a woman scoffing at the notion that Latinos could be nativists as he presented an early version of his dissertation to a room of intellectuals at a political science conference in Chicago. In his final study, which was published in 2012, Knoll concluded that as Latinos continued to grow up in and assimilate into the country, their pro-immigration bias would slowly dissipate, perhaps eventually disappear altogether.
Very similarly to what Jochen Mueller and Hopkins found, Knoll concluded that cultural assimilation, the degree to which Latinos are and feel Americanized was a much stronger predictor of nativism that their concern about economic competition or any other variable. Yet, as opposed to many white Americans, Latinos have to work twice as hard to not just feel American, but to be accepted as American by the larger society. Assimilation is a contractual agreement. It can only work if both parties agree to the terms. Thus, recent immigrants don't just threaten Latinos' own sense of belonging. They threaten to taint the image the rest of America has of Latinos.
Menendez: There's often spoken about this rift of country of origin, how long have you and your family been in this country, but you're seeing what I'm seeing, which is sometimes it's fairly recent arrivals now who are saying, "I don't want to see any more immigration in this country."
Ramos: Completely. I mean, that's one of the things I always think about is Ron DeSantis, right? When Ron DeSantis flies migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, and you look at the polling that comes out right after that, that move was mostly supported not just by a majority of Latinos, but specifically the polls show that by a majority of immigrants. There is something very contagious about the anti-immigrant like xenophobic narrative, and it makes complete sense. Now, there is something very powerful when Trump in his attempt to change Latinos for Trump, changes the words Latino-Americans for Trump. Because in that he's essentially trying to convey to Latinos that you too can otherize, that you too who are different than the rest of White America, you too can be part of our group. And that's a really, really, really powerful feeling because one of the best things about this book is, you can do the reporting, you can meet these characters, but trying to make sense of it all with psychologists, with researchers, with scholars that can take me a level deeper into all of it. And that's when I learned so much.
And so part of the research shows you that the anti-immigrant sentiment is so high that at times it can subdue anti-Blackness, which is one of this country's original, most powerful sins to the degree that in some counties they find that as the rate of Mexican immigration increases in some counties, white people's attitudes towards Black people become more positive, and their attitudes towards their Latino neighbors becomes more negative. And so that in itself tells you that anti-immigrant sentiment is so deep that no one is immune to it, particularly if you are a Latino and you have a target on your back, and you have to prove that Americanness.
Menendez: Right. Because you're probing both anti-immigrant sentiment from people who are themselves immigrants and anti-Black sentiment from people who might get coded in the United States as being Black. You introduce us to this woman, give her a pseudonym, Isabel, Afro-Dominican in the Bronx, big Trump supporter.
Ramos: For years the idea that a Black Latina, that an Afro-Dominican, that an Afro-Latino could be a Trump supporter, was never part of the discussion. I'm talking to you from New York City, all you have to do is go to the Bronx. Donald Trump was in the Bronx a couple of months ago, and people were laughing at the idea that he would even go there. But if you start having casual conversations with some of the Afro-Latinos that are there, you do start to understand that anti-Blackness, again, is part of the discourse and it has less to do with politics and less to do with Trumpism and more to do with the racial baggage and the history that we have in Latin America. Why? Because to be a Dominican in this country also means that so much of your national consciousness and your identity is built around being anti-Haitian, being anti-Black. It is built around the proximity that many feel they have towards the original colonizers, the Spaniards.
And so in the Bronx with Isabel, one of the things that we kept going back and forth was, so what is your race? And she would never respond. She would be like, "Yo soy Latina. I'm Latina." What is your race? Are you Black? And the answer, it was never a straight yes, right? Because in their eyes, to be Black is to be Haitian. No, in their eyes, to be Black is to be part of a group in the United States that has been criminalized, African Americans, and in their eyes as an Afro-Latina, they see that that proximity to her European whiteness supersedes any other identity. And so that's kind of what I try and get at in this book. It's put the politics aside, put the polls aside and the surveys aside. Let's dig into the very complicated history and the narratives that we've sort of built. Let's talk about that because it's really complicated.
Menendez: I thought it was really interesting that you use your own experience of being queer in spaces where that was not welcomed to sort of access some of this mindset. I think that's a surprising lens to use.
Ramos: I mean, I don't get to use it. It comes with me. So I walk into spaces, it is an identity that I can never sort of tiptoe around, and it comes with me whether I'm at the border or whether I'm interviewing Proud Boys or whether I'm interviewing Christian nationalists or evangelicals, and it's something that I can't ever escape. And so it's part of all those conversations, and it is a weight that I've carried for years at this point, this idea of, wait, what are they thinking about me? What credibility do I have? I know that this person fundamentally disagrees in the way that I love, or I present or I look or in my own mindset, and I can't ever escape that. But it does offer a sort of entry point into conversations with people that fundamentally disagree with everything that I embody. And so if they can sit down and talk to me, I better try and attempt to do the same, which is kind of understand where these really dark thoughts and beliefs come from.
Menendez: You talk though about despite the fact that you came out fairly young, still being in spaces and spaces that should be quote, unquote, "safe spaces" where just expressing intimacy or physical touch with someone else tenses you up because there is still a part of you that knows you need to be on alert. Is that something you recognized about yourself or something that someone else brought to your attention?
Ramos: I recognize it to this day. I mean, I am as gay as I can be. I've had a partner for many years, but it is true that I'm still always on alert. But one of the things that sort of comes up a lot in the book is just how, particularly when it comes to like the LGBTQ issues around our community, it does invoke a moral panic that is at least very palpable to me. And going back to the history, the gender norms and the cultural norms and the masculinity and everything that has been so deeply ingrained in Latin America, all of that we carry with us, not just the people that I'm interviewing, myself included. I mean, it took me, you say I came out when I was pretty young, but to me, I wish that I would've been my 13, 14-year-old closet itself and would've come out the way that Gen Zers are now so proudly leaning into who they are. As a 30 plus year old, I still struggle with it sometimes.
Menendez: Thank you for reminding me that we are old.
Ramos: Okay, we're still millennials.
Menendez: Hanging by a thread.
Ramos: Hanging by a thread. But that's one of the most incredible things to observe about the moment now of Latinos, which is these two, in my eyes, opposing forces. One is the one that I talk about in the book, which is the very small but growing segment of Latinos that find something attractive in Trumpism and extremism. But the other one is really the most interesting one, which is the opposite force, which is this younger Gen Zer, younger millennials of Latinos that are holding the Democratic Party more accountable because they want more and because they sort of express more and feel like they deserve more. And so I think that to me is what's so interesting about the moment.
Menendez: You introduce us in Defectors to a concept I was not familiar with, which is the perennial mourning of immigrants. And you are not an immigrant, that perennial mourning gets handed down, how that shows up for you.
Ramos: Yeah. So perennial mourning is this idea that as immigrants, and it could be first, second, third generation, as you said, it passes down, we're always sort of holding onto the past, mourning the homes that you leave behind and the memories that you leave behind and the culture that you leave behind, there's always this constant attachment to the past. And so I bring that up in the book because I think that helps explain the way that then some Latinos can be susceptible to certain narratives that are coming from Latin America, to certain misinformation that sort of exploits those memories.
I grew up around a Cuban grandfather whose entire identity was built around perennial mourning. I mean, my grandfather, until he died, was obsessed with the idea of returning to Cuba and romanticizing these places. My father, a Mexican immigrant, he spent more than half of his life now, obviously in the United States, but his dream has always been to one day return to Mexico. And so I feel it through them. And I think what's interesting for us, for the kids of these immigrants is I romanticized Cuba, but I remember when I was finally able to go to Cuba through the Obama years that I actually felt no connection to the island at all. And I think that's the interesting experiment of being a Latino in the United States. It's like putting together that perennial mourning and then building your own new identities and going back to these places and rediscovering them and making them your own.
Menendez: You talked about your grandfather and you dedicate the book to him. You write: "For my beloved Abuelo Carlos." And I wonder what you learned from him and what you learned from how he chose to die.
Ramos: I get emotional. I mean, I am not a crier, but this is the one person that makes me cry. Obviously, I adore my grandfather. I get emotional because I think of the bravery that he had. He chose to pursue euthanasia. He had debilitating Parkinson. And so about a year and a half ago, he told my mother in Miami, he said that he was ready to go back to Spain, which is one of the few countries that has legalized euthanasia. And he said that he wanted to end his life there, that he wanted to pursue applying to that law. And I think for some people that seems shocking, but I think because my grandfather fundamentally, truly believed in individual freedom so much, that was his fight, that that makes so much sense that he chose to leave this world in that way. This idea that everyone deserves dignity, and so the very last breath that you take, and that's exactly what he did.
What I learned from him the most was just being, he was so curious about the world. I mean, this man, particularly in the world of journalism, he was the incredible, incredible listener. And one more thing, now that I think about it, as a Cuban American from Miami, there's all these stereotypes around us and the community. He's someone that, of course, in the past, a good Miami Cuban, of course, he was a Republican at times of his life, he was very much opposed to Trump. But the thing about him having a gay granddaughter, having someone in this world that also was very different from him, he was always, always so open, not just about me, but about everyone. He was always open to learn, to evolve and open to change his mind, and I think that's such an important trait.
Menendez: Paola, congratulations. Thank you for doing this.
Ramos: Thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.
Menendez: Thanks for listening. Latina to Latina is executive produced and owned by Juleyka Lantigua and me, Alicia Menendez. Virginia Lora is our producer. Kojin Tashiro is our lead producer. Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. We love hearing from you, email us at hola@latinatolatina.com. Slide into our DMs on Instagram or on Threads and TikTok @latinatolatina. Check out our merchandise at latinatolatina.com/shop. And remember to subscribe or follow us on RadioPublic, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Goodpods, wherever you're listening right now. Every time you share this podcast, every time you leave a review, you help us to grow as a community.
CITATION:
Menendez, Alicia, host. “How Paola Ramos Became Insatiably Curious” Latina to Latina, LWC Studios, September 30, 2024. LatinaToLatina.com.