Republicans’ have a Latino problem. Their anti-Mexican rhetoric isn’t working out. Donald Trump has been dumped by NBC, UNIVISION, and Macy’s for his anti-Mexican statements. Their commentators haven’t helped much either. Some have indicated that this is due to Latinos growing economic and political influence. Nonetheless, the ever-growing Republican presidential field features the first two Latino presidential candidates in U.S. history, Texas senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Both are Cuban and both espouse a particular brand of American exceptionalism and anti-federal government policy solutions.
When they tell their families’ stories, however, they are not aimed at Latina/o families. Instead, their immigrant narrative is a repetition of an idealized nineteenth century story that does not fit into the late twentieth century context in which it unraveled. In their recounting, their families seem more like German or Italian families than the Cuban diaspora. Their families never passed by the Statue of Liberty or entered Ellis Island, but they came to the U.S. for the American dream, for the chance to succeed and experience a type of freedom unequaled anywhere in the world. At first their families were poor, oppressed, and downtrodden but they worked hard and sacrificed. Then, they succeeded—both economically and in assimilating. The only particularity of the Cuban experience that Cruz and Rubio mention is that their families fled communism. For them, communism—of which American liberalism is just a step away, brought closer by Obama’s near Marxism—is any form of government intervention. Big government, whether Castro’s communism or Roosevelt’s New Deal—robbed their families of opportunity, oppressed their communities, and sapped individual initiative. Their families and community witnessed the horrors of government run amok and that’s why they don’t want to see it in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. That’s why they are anti-liberal crusaders—they’ve seen the destruction that liberalism can bring.
