By Mer Fagliano
We are in the midst of the presidential primaries. Candidates from both sides are trying to show that they can make the best case on a national stage. The Democratic Party has continuously made news for presenting a heavily populated group of candidates that can’t agree on political priorities. But there is one thing that candidates agree on: Democrats need to win minority votes to win.
The Hispanic population has been centered since the 2016 Presidential election. Trump’s rhetoric and policies focused on this minority group and left people wondering who was going to receive their support; many assumed that it would be Hillary Clinton. The election saw the highest Latinx turnout ever, however still 13 million eligible Latinxs did not vote. Most outstanding were the 28% of Latinxs who voted Republican, despite the “rapists,” “build a wall,” and “stealing our jobs” rants.
Since then, Democrats running for 2020 presidential elections have been pushing to represent our community and attract Latinxs to their lines. There has been an emphasis on issues with ICE, immigration, and problems at the border. But candidates are not just putting out policies (or half-explanatory phrases of abstract things they would like to do). No, America is more interesting than that. Candidates are speaking Spanish (read: attempting to speak and failing to remember AP Spanish essentials).
From debates to town halls, interviews and webpages, almost every candidate has shown their “support” for the community. Most candidates now offer versions of their website in Spanish while other candidates are regurgitating Google-Translate-like Spanish phrases arguing their case for the nomination. But no one was more covered in the news for his “use” of the language than Beto O’Rourke, former representative from El Paso, Texas, who dropped out of the race on November 1st.
Beto stirred expectations when he joined the race as an elected Democrat in a red state who claimed could turn Texas blue. But he did not get much attention from the media until the first round of democratic debates in June. Beto’s performance was average at best. The highlight of his night occured when, within the first three minutes of the debate, he translated part of his answer on tax policy into Spanish. His answer simply stated that he wanted to include everyone in the economy but did not outline how he would do it. He was not the only one to unfold bilingual skills. Castro had the tagline “Let's say adiós to Donald Trump” and Booker gave a partially translated answer on ending immigrant demonization when he was asked what he would do on the first day of his presidency. These phrases prompted Marianne Williamson, irrelevant presidential candidate and president of my “Why the hell are you running for president?” list, to tweet about needing to learn Spanish before her debate night.
Despite lacking any humor, Williamson’s tweet provides concise commentary on candidates’ “strategy” to engage with the Hispanic community. A strategy that, judging by the amount of errors each time the candidates engage in bilingualism, was not carefully crafted. Just to clarify, I am not talking about funky accents, I am talking about legitimate grammatical mistakes. Beto used the wrong prepositions several times, confusing femenine with masculine when referring to the economy and democracy. So did Booker and Buttigieg. Politico found that there is no candidate, absolutely none, that does not have grammatical errors on their Spanish webpage. Highlights include Kamala Harris’s stating that she “wasted her life defending the country’s values”, and Warren’s translating the “I am not sure” button to “En realidad, no estoy en, y he aquí por qué.”
What is the problem with this? Candidates are using our language and culture to make news and get votes. What’s worse is that they are not even trying to make sure they represent it well. Beto’s answer and Booker’s reaction became memes in mere minutes. For a prepared statement that Beto had days to study and practice (and could have had written on a piece of paper on the podium), it was highly disappointing. Because of him and every candidate trying to imitate the strategy, late night hosts and news anchors started mocking the use of Spanish in the debate.
Moments like these perpetuate the common American practice of thinking that saying a word in Spanish is funny. These phrases only make non-Hispanic voters say “LOL look at them trying to cater to Latinxs #fail” and Hispanic voters say “what?” Being able to say “Good night” or “and also” in Spanish is not the way to show the community that they can rely on you to lead the country (looking at you, Pete). Candidates sound like that one guy that went on a one-week-long trip to Mexico and feels proud he was able to say “hola,” even though he pronouns it “oula”. Are you telling me that not only are you using my culture to get more votes but that you also did not care enough to proofread your statement? Here is a thought: why don’t you just, I don’t know, put out good policies?
Don’t get me wrong: I would love to see candidates engaging with constituents on a personal level but I am not a proponent of doing it through poorly translated sentences that bait news shows into talking about how you represent Hispanics because you know three Spanish words. That is not how it should work. Candidates represent the Hispanic community when their personal background or policies deal with our culture and the issues we face day-to-day. Do you want to cater to the community? Cool, go ahead. But be respectful about it. Make sure we are not a medium. Make sure that the content and form of your statements are meaningful and that you are actually engaging with the issues in the best way possible.
Candidates that know Spanish can participate in a Spanish-speaking town hall event, organize rallies and respond to questions in Spanish, or even interview with Spanish-speaking news outlets. A good, as good as it can be, an example of this is that of Cory Booker doing an interview with Univision early in his campaign. To a smaller scale, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran for the congressional democratic primaries she went to the streets and engaged with Spanish-speaking voters by stating her specific policies and values in Spanish. Candidates that do not know Spanish can host events at community-relevant cities. Kamala Harris did just this, at a recent town hall in Nevada, her senior adviser gave out headsets for live translations and encouraged voters to ask questions in Spanish.
There are better strategies for candidates that would guarantee engagement with the community without using pieces of our culture to meme-ify themselves and the Latinx community. In the meantime, candidates can stop perpetuating insulting habits of non-Hispanic communities. While they figure out how to appeal to their Hispanic constituents without wrongfully using our culture to become a nation-wide meme, they can do all of us a favor and shut up.
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