All of which may amount to one of the lesser-understood reasons why Dominican Americans as a voting group may have warmed to Donald Trump in last week’s election. Virtually every demographic group moved to the right, but among Latinos the change was especially large. There’s no exit poll that breaks down Latino voters by national origin, but some data — and some anecdotal evidence — point to large gains for Trump among voters of Dominican ancestry.
To be clear, Dominicans weren’t responsible for electing Trump, many voted for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, and there’s a diversity of opinion on the island and within the Dominican diaspora (and every other immigrant community). Some Dominicans who voted for Trump undoubtedly did so for reasons that have nothing to do with immigration, including abortion. And even if some Dominicans brought their prejudices with them from their homeland, that wouldn’t make them any different from lots of other immigrant groups over the course of US history.
But it might help explain why Trump’s immigrant bashing failed to outrage Latino voters as much as pundits expected — because, at a time when Haitians fleeing violence and disorder in Haiti account for a sizeable share of new arrivals to both the United States and the Dominican Republic, some Dominicans may have sympathized with Trump’s anti-immigrant stances and anti-Haitian rhetoric.
The language used against Haitians in the Dominican Republic has often been harsh. Recent footage from a “march against the Haitian invasion” held in the Dominican Republic, shared on X, showed protesters carrying flags that read “Trump 2024.” A politician from the Fuerza Nacional Progresista political party, which leans center-right, said in an October press conference that a “Donald Trump victory could help the Dominican Republic with the Haitian issue.”
A local Dominican leader in Massachusetts who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution for publicly criticizing his homeland told me that they saw “Dominicans celebrating Trump’s win in Santo Domingo” in a social media post. At least one Dominican news anchor praised Trump’s win. A local news story said it all in the opening paragraph: “As if it were a victory of a candidate in the Dominican Republic, dozens of people from the Dominicans with Trump Movement celebrated the United States Republican candidate’s victory.”
Trump, recall, is the candidate who wrongly accused Haitians in Ohio of eating dogs and cats.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said the Dominican leader in Boston who did not want to be identified.
The Bronx has the largest concentration of Dominicans in the United States. According to preliminary data, the Bronx had the largest vote shift toward Trump in the state, going from 16 percent in 2020 to 27 percent last week.
In Massachusetts, where Dominicans represent the second-largest foreign-born group, a similar pattern was seen in Lawrence, as I wrote last week. The Gateway City in the Merrimack Valley has the second-largest Dominican population — 48,000 people — among American cities, after New York City.
Those numbers don’t necessarily prove anything. But it would be wrong to ignore them.
State Representative Manny Cruz of Salem, who is Dominican American, offered a nuanced take on the way attitudes toward immigrants in the Dominican Republic might have influenced voters’ attitudes here. “Obviously the Dominican Republic is also acutely facing the immigration issue and the migrant crisis related to the political unrest in Haiti,” he said. “And I think, at times, that type of uncertainty around a state that’s neighboring to you, it can create strange bedfellows.”
At the same time, Cruz said he did not want to “draw too much from it” because he hasn’t seen conclusive data.
The sad reality is that the history of America is of immigrant groups coming to this country, encountering hostility, assimilating — and then turning against the next group of immigrants seeking to follow in their footsteps. Looking through a historical lens, it wouldn’t be unusual if some Latino voters indeed followed that pattern. It’d be unusual if some didn’t.
Marcela García is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @marcela_elisa and on Instagram @marcela_elisa.
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Publish date : 2024-11-11 20:04:00
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