In 'Defectors,' journalist Paola Ramos explores the effects of Trumpism on the Latino vote

Latinos are not a monolith.

We've heard that time and again, particularly when it comes to decoding the "Latino vote" during an election year. And time and again, the 63 million Hispanics or Latinos living in the U.S. (36 million of which are eligible to vote) have proven that very sentiment right. In 2020, Donald Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote than he did in 2016, and according to a recent Pew Research Center report, that number continues to shift.

So, despite Trump's dangerous anti-immigration rhetoric and dehumanizing border policies, why are Latinos tempted to vote against their own community? Why do Latinos feel comfortable among the far-right? What roles do tribalism, trauma and traditionalism play in all of this, and why should we listen to this growing group of voters?

Those are all questions Emmy-winning journalist Paola Ramos seeks to answer in "Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America" (Pantheon, pp. 256, out now).

The Telemudno News and MSNBC contributor's follow-up to "Finding Latin-X: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity" explores how race, identity and political trauma have ignited a far-right sentiment among Latinos and how this group is shaping American politics.

Check out: USA TODAY's weekly Best-selling Booklist

"I hope 'Defectors' ingrains a very simple lesson, which is that to be Latino means that we are very complicated human beings," she says. "That we, too, as individuals have complicated histories − and beautiful histories − but it's complicated."

To write her book, the VICE News reporter sat down with Gabriel Garcia, a first-generation Cuban American and former member of the Proud Boys, among other January 6th rioters. She also spoke with: a Dominican hair salon worker who has internalized anti-Blackness rhetoric that's an epidemic of its own within the Latino community and who voted for Trump; a Latino border vigilante from El Paso; Latina members of Moms for Liberty, which is a conservative group pushing bills like "Don't Say Gay"; evangelical pastors and culture war crusaders.

"I hope this book gives people the curiosity to understand us a little better, to understand our history and to understand why we act a certain way, and more than anything, for Latinos, if they're reading this, it'll help us understand us more and hopefully have difficult conversations that I think Republicans and mostly Democrats should be having."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: To write 'Defectors,' you interviewed some people with extreme views that can negatively impact the Latino community. What would you say to anyone thinking, 'Why should we listen to them or give them a platform'?

Paola Ramos: I receive a lot of pushback sometimes for having these conversations with insurrectionists, with Moms for Liberty, with folks carrying pretty violent anti-immigrant rhetoric, so that question comes up all the time. I think the only way to understand what could be driving this shift toward Trumpism requires us to sit down and have those conversations. At the end of the day, what's so interesting about the conversations is that it's really not about politics but rather it comes down to people's individual journey to find belonging in this country.

A search for belonging − more often than not − is now sort of driving some people toward Trumpism. As a community, having these conversations is an exercise that everyone should be willing to do because what I have also found is that it reveals what I tried to focus on in this book − which is that regardless if you're a Democrat or a Republican or independent, regardless of what you look like, regardless if you think you're a progressive or not − absolutely every single one of us is carrying a lot of baggage from Latin America, racial baggage and the baggage of this colonized mindset and political trauma. All of us carry that weight.

It's really, really important to at least attempt to understand that and that is what some of these difficult conversations got me to do. What I have found to be more interesting is when you just sit and listen to people and the act of listening is extremely important right now. The hardest part of this book, and our jobs, is getting people to trust you to sit down with them. It takes a while to get certain people that I spoke to in the book to want to sit down with me, to trust me enough to at least do the job of analyzing the 'why' so I think all of this entails a lot of trust and trust is deeply broken in this country right now.

'Latinos vote in different ways':Republican party's play for Latino voters is paying off. Hispanics explain why.

Did you ever feel unsafe going into any of the interviews?

I never felt unsafe. I felt discomfort many times. Particularly, when you enter into more of these conservative spaces, many times I am facing people that fundamentally disavow who I am as a queer Latina and there's a certain discomfort when, as a reporter, you're sort of challenging these power structures and you're challenging people's beliefs and you're pushing back. And maybe it's just because unconsciously I'm sort of trained, you know, for so many years of my life, I grew up with these Latino taboos and I do very much feel the weight of people's discomfort with who I am.

Whether it's interviewing Enrique Tarrio from The Proud Boys or Moms for Liberty or sitting in churches with pastors talking about why being gay is wrong and talking about Christian nationalism or whether I'm at the border with Mexican Americans who fundamentally believe immigrants are criminals − I feel that discomfort. It just comes down to this sort of visceral sense of disgust that has been ingrained in some communities to dehumanize people − whether it's immigrants, queer people, trans people, or women. Of course, I've felt it.

You structured "Defectors" in three parts: Tribalism, traditionalism and trauma. How did you zero in on these three T's?

I looked at the entire picture and I was trying to make sense of why some Latinos are warming up to the idea of mass deportation. Why is anti-Blackness resonating so much with some? Then I looked at another subgroup of Latinos and looked at why is it the case that as we become less religious there's then suddenly the rise of Latino evangelicals? Why am I seeing so many Latinos be so in tune with the anti-transgender crusade?

A way to analyze it is that there are three driving forces at the heart of this. There's tribalism that tries to really understand the racial baggage that we have and the internalized racism and why and where that comes from. There's traditionalism which is just breaking down what centuries of colonization have done to us and has led us to be so fixated on certain gender norms and sexual norms and then also leads us to this slippery slope of admiring things like Christian nationalism and then the trauma of this sort of admiration and a lot of Latinos flirting with the strongman rule and where that comes from.

Opinion | Strongmen and strife:Before Trump, I thought America was exceptional, now I have doubts

That's how I made sense of it. The coolest part of the book beyond the reporting and having these conversations, of course, was leaning on historians, psychologists and researchers who helped me make sense of it all.

Looking back at your reporting for "Defectors," is there something or someone you walked away from having a different opinion about?

Honestly, all of them. There's a tendency to be so scared of those who are so different from you and I fundamentally understand that. Before an interview with someone like the Proud Boys or Anthony Aguero that I interviewed at the border, I always walked into every single one of these interviews with so many preconceived biases and my own stereotypes and I was always very conscious of that. In fact, every time I walked into an interview and with every single person that I talked to, I was always kind of on guard. Then what I found in almost every instance was that their personas online, their stories, or who I thought they were were not necessarily the reality of their voices once I got to talk to them.

I was talking to actual people, that like I said, were just kind of on this quest to find belonging and that's how they ended up feeling welcomed among these groups. I was surprised at everyone's ability to sort of humanize each other because, at the end of the day, there was a source of pain behind all of it.

Dig deeper:Most Latinos in the US used to identify as Catholic. Not anymore.

That source of pain you discuss in the book, too, was so interesting to see at play with the Dominican hair salon owner who rejects her Blackness when you ask her about her racial identity.

In those moments it's so easy to walk away from the interview and be like, this woman is a racist. But it's not that simple, right? In so many of these instances, it could just be like the Afro-Latina hair salon owner is a racist but no − when I ask her, what's your race? And she says Hispanic. That rejection of saying and seeing herself as a Black woman, if we really do our jobs, comes down to a brutal history of colonization that has allowed for and encouraged people in very brutal and violent ways to resort to their ties to the Spanish colonizers, right? Because that has always been more idolized and embraced than being a Black person in Latin America.

That's where that pain comes from, and that's what people need to understand. In this country, where it is all about racial binaries where you're either Black or white, or where Black people are so criminalized, and African Americans have been so criminalized, then it leads to some Afro-Latinas to opt for whiteness under the guise of being Hispanic. It's not necessarily because they're racist but it's because that internalized racism has been so ingrained that it leads us to where we are right now.

After having covered former president Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton's presidential campaigns, and seeing what's happened after President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection, what do you think the Democratic party should do differently to mobilize Latinos to vote?

The first thing that comes to mind is a little bit of courage. I say this because I see a vice president Harris who when it comes to the issue of immigration, in my opinion, is falling into Republican traps. The trap being that there's a sense that you have to go to the center right on immigration if you want to win over independent voters and some conservative voters and even some Democrats. And so my wish is for someone like her, and just for leaders around the country, particularly when you're thinking about the Latino vote, is to understand that the long-term game and politics are always better than the immediate short-term game.

And the long-term game is to recognize that there are millions and millions of people living in this country who are undocumented and who have been promised time and again comprehensive immigration reform − those are the same people being dehumanized, attacked and criminalized. My hope is that that courage, which is the courage that led a lot of Latino voters to vote for Joe Biden in 2020, driven by the belief that politicians in general would finally do comprehensive immigration form. That took a lot of courage back then, and I think they need that again.

'We want to fix our country too':Wilmer Valderrama reflects on immigration and fatherhood in new memoir

Your father Jorge Ramos has served as a news anchor for Unvision for so many years and gained the trust of many Latino viewers. What do you hope longtime viewers take away from the legacy he's leaving behind?

It's been incredible to see the love he got, not just because it's heartwarming, but because it really speaks to the type of journalism he did which was based on trust. And that's such a hard thing to achieve today. It's been incredible to see how millions of Latinos have trusted him for so long and then I think of the way that both something like Univision and the Latino audience has grown throughout the last 40 years that my dad has been at the head of the newscast.

'Secon home':Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos announces departure after 40-year tenure

I've learned so much from my dad and I think he's learned a little bit from me. He's taught me very important lessons − the main lesson has always been, 'You have the privilege of being a reporter and a journalist and your goal is to always hold those in power accountable.' That has always been ingrained me. He's taught me to always be empathic, if you need people to talk to you and build trust then you have to walk into every interview being empathetic and understanding. And then he's taught me to listen and so I carry that with me everywhere I go.