In Florida, many Hispanic voters are worried this election was stolen from Donald Trump. They’ve seen this before, hence why they fled places like Cuba and Venezuela. They’re also not too keen on the media censorship and bias during this race, either. Some interviewed by USA Today also said that they never feared communism becoming entrenched on America's shores until this election year. Margarita De Castro, who fled Cuba two years after Fidel Castro took over, has voted Republican ever since she arrived in the United States, citing her persecution by Cuban communists as one of the main reasons. She also called Kamala Harris “another Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” as well. She’s not wrong (via USA Today):
For many Americans, the idea of a presidential election devolving into a months-long battle for control of the nation may be unprecedented, but for many Latino supporters of President Donald Trump – many of whom escaped authoritarian regimes themselves – it raises old ghosts. There is no evidence of election fraud, but many fear covert socialists are in cahoots with the media in an attempt to rob a sitting U.S. president of power.
“People used to say Communism can’t happen in Cuba, and look how that turned out,” De Castro said on a recent afternoon as she played with her great-granddaughter in her home in West Miami, a working-class Cuban American enclave in South Florida where the majority of votes were cast for Trump.
De Castro said her big fear is Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. "She's another AOC," she said referring to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has described herself as a Democratic socialist. Harris has generally stopped short of embracing many of the policies championed by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
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“When you have national Democratic leaders praising Fidel Castro’s indoctrination programs and hailing neo-Marxists as ‘the future of the party,’ it communicated to our community that the Democratic Party does not respect our values,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a Cuban American communication strategist on the Trump campaign. "We simply voted accordingly, as did many other Latinos – like Colombians and Peruvians – who want nothing to do with socialism and the progressive agenda.”
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Carolina Tejera, 44, a soap opera actress, was outraged watching TV channel after channel project Biden as the 46th president of the United States. It wasn’t only CNN and MSNBC that made her livid, Tejera said: “Fox News, too.”
The Venezuelan American flashed back to the moment radical populist Hugo Chavez first won the Venezuelan elections in 1998.
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Tejera and other GOP voters have also criticized social media platforms that have flagged the president's tweets as false. In February, Twitter announced it would begin labeling tweets as "manipulated media."
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Stephen Armas, a Cuban American recruiter for IT companies based in Colorado, said voters should be able to read anything freely and do their own research without interference, saying the "amount of censorship bestowed on Donald Trump is absolutely outrageous."
"I never thought I would see this in the United States of America," said Armas, 31.
He added: "As the son of Cuban immigrants I know all about a political party changing narrative, censoring and pushing their own agenda; and if you disagree, you're silenced."
Yet, not everyone is on board. Some of the Trump-supporting Hispanic voters here also think it’s time for a transition of power. With Georgia and Arizona now being called for Biden, some of these voters say it is now time to switch gears, even as Trump’s campaign legal apparatus continues to file legal challenges and allege serious voter fraud.
“Whoever wants to follow Trump after fraud allegations are dismissed and proper investigations are conducted, want to follow a dictator like Chavez or Fidel,” said William Villar, who the publication interviewed at the end of their piece. He’s a 26-year Navy veteran and Miami resident.
“I'm not a Trump-lican, I am a Republican,” he added.
Until this is over, however, fight on. What have we got to lose in our effort to save the country?
