How the native Texas Hispanics came to vote for Trump

 Bryan Preston:

A Texas native who died at the Alamo explains some of Trump's appeal to those on the border

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He was just 28 years old.

By ethnic terms today, some might classify Losoya as Mexican (or perhaps Spanish). By cultural terms now, many would classify him as Latino.

None of those would be accurate. Losoya was Tejano. Tejanos were the only natural-born Texans who fought for freedom in the Texas Revolution — the only ones. The other rebels were from other places. Tejanos are Texas’ original freedom fighters, and by and large today they still don’t identify as Latino. Similar to Cubans in Florida, Texas Tejanos are their own identity and culture due to their unique experiences and history. Tejanos are Texans and they are Americans.

Texas Democrats have long looked to the Hispanic vote to flip Texas blue for them. Their strategy is openly racist, discounting the real cultural currents that make Texas what it is, and seeing people in blocs rather than as individuals. In Politico, Jack Herrera notes now the Trump campaign recognized Tejano culture, and that made enormous differences across Texas and especially the Rio Grande Valley.

Ross Barrera, a retired U.S. Army colonel and chair of the Starr County Republican Party, put it this way: “It’s 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 don’t say we’re Mexican American. We say we’re Tejanos.”

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In the end, Trump’s success in peeling off Latino votes in South Texas had everything to do with not talking to them as Latinos. His campaign spoke to them as Tejanos, who may be traditionally Democratic but have a set of specific concerns—among them, the oil and gas industry, gun rights and even abortion—amenable to the Republican Party’s positions, and it resonated. To be sure, it didn’t work with all of Texas’ Latinos; Trump still lost that vote by more than double digits statewide, and Joe Biden won more of the nationwide Latino vote than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But Trump proved that seeing specific communities as persuadable voters and offering targeted messaging to match—fear of socialism in Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan and Cuban communities, for example—can be more effective than a blanket campaign that treats people as census categories. And in the end, it was enough to keep Florida and Texas in his column. If the Democratic Party’s 2020 postmortem for Texas—indeed, for the whole nation—goes only as far as to try to increase their appeal to “Latinos” as an undifferentiated bloc, they’re going to experience even harsher losses in the next election.

 On the other hand, part of the Democrats’ appeal involves hoodwinking naturally conservative Tejanos.

Take Cynthia Villarreal, a lifelong Democrat and lifelong Zapata resident. She, like many along the Texas border, holds that her family history begins with the Spaniards’ colonial regime along the Rio Grande.

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Villarreal thinks that if Democrats had been better at reaching people in Zapata and South Texas, more would have come to share her view rather than one fed to them by the GOP. “Biden is not coming for your guns,” she says, “and he’s personally pro-life.”

Neither of these is true. Biden has signaled that he will come for our guns and that he is far from personally pro-life. During the campaign, Biden said he would put fake Latino Robert O’Rourke in charge of his administration’s gun control policies. O’Rourke had by then already declared “Hell, yes we’re going to take away your AR-15, your AK-47!” Biden now signals he will find ways to tax guns and ammunition to hurt gun owners.

On abortion, his previous administration took nuns to court to force them to offer contraception and he has signaled he would do away with the Hyde Amendment and force taxpayers to fund abortion. The Democratic Party no longer welcomes anyone who is pro-life.

Tejanos support the military and law enforcement; Biden has been largely silent other than late and perfunctory statements as his fellow Democrats in Austin and elsewhere defunded police and let loose anarchy on city streets. His statement that antifa is merely an idea lets the rioters off the hook and leaves them free to continue destroying businesses, threatening lives, and demonizing and demoralizing law enforcement officers. Our cities face crises thanks to the Democrats’ left; Biden thus far has provided no leadership.

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These people are illegal aliens or their descendants.  They are Texas Americans and proud of it.  They are hard workers, risk-takers who start businesses or work in the oil field.  They can also be victims of Democrats' open-borders policies.  What Trump was able to tell them is that they are not natural constituents of the Democrats.