Florida's Latino voters will play an extraordinary role in the 2020 presidential election.
No president since 1924 has clinched an election without carrying Florida _ and Latinos are one of the most powerful voting blocs in a swing state where elections are won by the thinnest of margins.
The trap door to reel us in has been set by the GOP: socialism.
Donald Trump is looking for a replay of 2016 _ and the only way a president who has chaotically mismanaged a pandemic that has cost almost 200,000 American lives and plunged the economy into a deep dive can win again is to appeal to people's worst fears.
Republicans _ and most stridently among Hispanics, the Cuban Americans _ are casting President Trump as a savior from the type of socialism we left behind while painting Democrat Joe Biden, a centrist his entire political career, as a leftist.
"What I learned from communists is that the key to get your followers to forgive your excesses and immorality is to convince them that the alternative is unacceptable," says Guennavy Rodriguez, the 39-year-old Cuban editor of the political blog and podcast Flagler y 23 in Miami. "Everything is forgiven for Trump as long as he devotes his daily prayers to the 'communism' that threatens us."
But Latinos should weigh the facts: Who's the real dictator?
In Florida, a substantial bloc of voters like me are marked by the experience of fleeing totalitarian regimes. And that's precisely why I fear, not Biden, but another four years of authoritarian Trump, whose anti-socialist rhetoric is a farce.
During the past four years, I've seen Trump resort to dictatorial tactics that are all too familiar: constantly lying, disregarding constitutional mandates and turning Americans against one another for his own benefit.
My family and I lived through all that, and more, during the 10 years we lived under Fidel Castro's regime.
If you don't vote Republican, you're a socialist, Trump and his supporters peddle with vehemence.
Where have I heard that before?
In Cuba, where if you weren't a fidelista, you were told you were no longer Cuban, a nonperson, and were treated that way. That's why when you left the country, they stamped your passport "Nulo" (void) to nullify your existence.
To demand that people show allegiance to one party _ or be branded anti-American _ is as undemocratic as it gets, not to mention, a completely false choice.
We have the right as Americans to question power. That's why we came here.
LATINO SUPPORT FOR TRUMP
Yet, some of the political research indicates that Latino support for Trump is real and stronger than it was in 2016, despite Trump's offensive behavior and policies that disproportionately target and affect Latin American immigrants.
According to the latest polls, Biden leads Trump 48% to 45% in Florida.
But two out of three Venezuelans, a group Trump has heavily courted in Miami, told pollsters for the University of North Florida that they would vote to reelect him.
Under Biden, Venezuelans would get the coveted TPS, Temporary Protected Status that would allow them to work legally and keep them from being deported while Venezuela is in upheaval and can't safely return home.
The Democratic House passed legislation granting Venezuelans TPS, but Republicans in the Senate blocked it. And Trump has refused to protect them via executive order.
That's another branding trait of a dictator: Saying one thing to curry favor and disguise the real agenda, then doing another.
Trump says one thing in Miami to rally Cuban and Venezuelan exiles and another in Washington.
The president had no qualms telling Axios that he would meet with dictator Nicolas Maduro. Facing backlash at the contradiction with his own policy and support for the opposition, his team backtracked, saying Trump meant only as a way for Maduro to leave the country.
Venezuelans are suffering from the same ailment that has clouded the judgment of too many Cuban Americans: believing that the American right is going to bring democracy to their homeland when it has strayed far from it in the United States.
TRUMP LOVES PUTIN
The Hispanics who support Trump ignore the fact that the candidate who has professed affinity and admiration for dictators like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin isn't Biden, but Trump.
It was Trump who hosted Communist China's President Xi Jinping and his wife in Mar-a-Lago in 2017, lavishing the dictator with praise and attention, despite his government's acts of violent repression at home and the security risks to which Trump exposed our nation.
Russia played a key role in destroying Cuban democracy. Never trust Russia, any Cuban would have told you before Trump. It's in Russia's best interests to keep the island as a satellite 90 miles from the United States.
To this day, Putin is sustaining the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes. Trump has refused to sanction Russia for interfering in our elections or targeting our soldiers in Afghanistan.
The running joke among Hispanic Democrats in Miami is that they were left waiting for Putin to make an appearance at the Republican National Convention.
"Let's not be confused. If in Cuba Fidel Castro were ruling in top form, he (Trump) would admire him the way he does Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un," Uva de Aragon, a retired professor who ran the Cuban Studies Research Center at Florida International University, wrote in her blog. "He has a passion for strongmen because he covets unlimited power. He's a frustrated Hitler."
No doubt that Trump would deal with Castro if it benefited him.
He already has.
Not only was it revealed recently that his Russia-connected campaign manager Paul Manafort traveled to Cuba to meet with one of the Castros' sons, but Trump tried to build a golf course in Varadero and a Trump Tower in Havana in violation of the U.S. embargo.
This has been well-reported, and I, too, confirmed it during an off-the-record interview in 2016 with one of the Cuban Americans involved in the tower project.
NO SAVIOR FOR HISPANICS
No, Trump isn't our savior from socialism, Florida Hispanics.
He's the caudillo we fled.
He's a populist strongman seeking to silence an independent media that has been the backbone of democracy since the nation's foundation.
Where did I first hear journalists called "the enemy of the people?"
In interviews and conversations with Cuban exiles, especially the Cuban journalists who fled Fidel Castro's brand of communism. They worked both in Cuban news outlets and American outposts like news wire services, which Castro shut down or confiscated, and retooled to his purposes.
Weakening the media was a key step to consolidating absolute power.
Some of these exiles were founding members of the Miami Herald's sister newspaper, el Herald (now called el Nuevo Herald), and, were they living now, they would be horrified hearing Trump threatening television stations with pulling their licenses.
Quashing and expelling media that keep elected officials in check by asking tough questions is also what Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have done in Venezuela. I haven't heard Biden say that Fox News' license should be pulled as punishment for its right-wing bent.
So why do Latinos support Trump?
Party loyalty.
It's as strong in Miami as it is in Havana or Caracas. As strong in Orlando as it is in San Juan.
Idolatry of the caudillo is a cultural ill _ OK, as long as it's our chieftain, and he purports to serve us.
That's why Fidel Castro so easily amassed power in Cuba. He was popular. He was fiery. He was a reality-show star long before Trump.
These days, Hispanics also are supporting Trump out of fear.
Complicit Republicans have convinced them _ against all evidence, given the rejection by voters of left-leaning candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren _ that the Democratic Party is embracing socialism.
But who's the one saying he wants to serve beyond constitutional limits?
Not Joe Biden.
It's a lie, and lying is the trademark of the wannabe American dictator.
