Latinos in once true-blue Texas border zone are getting on the Trump train

Anna Holcomb is preparing her Ram pickup truck for the big event on Saturday, festooning it in Make America Great Again (Maga) flags that flap restlessly in the searing hot Texas wind.

Holcomb is gearing up for a show of strength by Donald Trump supporters in the Rio Grande valley, the region of south Texas that flanks the Mexican border. From 8am on Saturday morning, thousands of similarly decked-out vehicles will form convoys along a 300-mile stretch, from Brownsville on the Gulf of Mexico all the way north to Eagle Pass.

They will converge on the fair grounds in Holcomb’s small town of Zapata, where the number of cars is expected to exceed the local 5,000-strong population. There will be a carne asada cook-off, prizes for the most lavishly decorated Maga vehicle, and a joining of hands in prayers for Trump.

The convoys are known as “Trump Trains”, and though they have appeared in other states they have taken off in the Rio Grande valley. They symbolize the political drama that is unfolding in this overwhelmingly Hispanic community that has for generations been umbilically tied to the Democratic party: the seemingly unassailable rise of Trump.

Presidential election results in Zapata county starkly tell the story. In 2012, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney was trounced by Barack Obama 28% to 71%.

When Trump made his first bid for the White House in 2016 he barely improved on Romney’s record, attracting 33% of Zapata’s votes to Hilary Clinton’s 66%. But then in 2020 he sent shockwaves through the valley, winning the county by 53% to Joe Biden’s 47%.

It was the first time in 100 years that a Republican presidential candidate had won Zapata. This rugged community of cattle ranches dotted with prickly pear cactus plants, which is 95% Hispanic and has been unswervingly Democratic since 1920, had fallen for the Apprentice star turned US president.

Holcomb, 58, is part of the wind of change blowing through the valley. She is an American-born Hispanic woman whose mother immigrated from Old Guerrero on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande river.

Holcomb, who worked in the local oil business, has been politically active since she turned 18. The politicians she canvassed for were invariably Democratic – it was the only party that ever fielded candidates.

“We believed the Democratic party was the party for the working class. That’s what I understood it to be,” she said.

Then Trump came along. She vividly recalls his 2015 speech after descending the escalator of Trump Tower announcing his presidential bid, in which he talked about some Mexican immigrants being “rapists” and others bringing in drugs and crime. Within minutes of the speech ending her phone began ringing as several of her first cousins – she estimates she has more than 40 in the Zapata area, all of Mexican descent – shared with her their alarm.

She had a different response. “I liked his speech. I liked that he said he was going to be stricter with the influx of immigrants. He got me thinking, my country first. I am American. Sure I have Hispanic blood, but I am red, white and blue American.”

Her cousins told her that anyone in Zapata who voted for Trump was crazy given his disdain for Mexicans. She replied: “Call me crazy, I’m voting for him.”

She did vote for Trump in 2016, though she did so surreptitiously, telling no one. “Back then it felt like a sin to be a Republican,” she said. By 2020, she felt confident enough to join a Trump Train that did a victory loop around town after the county results came in.

Now Holcomb is preparing to fight for Trump again and she expects him to win even more handsomely in Zapata this time. She guesses that her 40-plus first cousins are evenly divided this year between those who are pro-Trump and those who still virulently oppose him.

Holcomb’s story is repeating itself throughout the Rio Grande valley. Trump has marched through the area, winning 14 out of 28 counties in 2020 that previously had been presumed Democratic.

An opinion poll from April conducted by the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation (TxHPF) found that Trump was leading his then presumptive rival Biden in South Texas by 44% to 36%. That was an astounding statistic given the region’s previously lock-tight Democratic record, its Hispanic roots and Trump’s often unrestrained hostility towards immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

“Trump is doing better in south Texas and the Rio Grande valley than he is in the big urban counties, and that’s of note because historically Texas Democrats relied on the RGV as their reservoir of votes,” said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University.

Analysts caution against drawing national conclusions from the valley, given its unique fusion of Texan and Mexican history and culture. Local people tend not to call themselves Hispanic, Latino, or Mexican American – they identify as “Tejanos”.

It would be equally foolhardy, however, to ignore Trump’s surge. Hispanic Americans are among the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country, the Pew Research Center has found, accounting for 36 million eligible voters – 15% of the total – in November.

Nationally, although most Latino voters continue to vote Democratic, the margins are falling – from 71% Democratic support in 2016 to 63% in 2020. The rate at which Trump is making inroads varies greatly by state, turning the country into a patchwork of contrasting loyalties .

Biden did well in 2020 among Latino voters in Arizona , who were critical to his victory . His success came on the back of years of intensive grassroots organising by Democratic groups. They harnessed the backlash to the harsh anti-immigrant bill SB 1070 passed by state Republicans a decade earlier.

By contrast, Trump did well in Florida, building on the longstanding Republican affinities of Cuban Americans around Miami. Trump also capitalised on voters’ feelings towards immigration, but in this case he did so in a diametrically opposed direction – he emphasised his own harsh attitude towards undocumented immigrants, an argument which played well with Cuban émigrés. .

That the same issue – immigration – could polarise Latino voters in two key states cautions against making firm political assumptions. It is becoming ever clearer that America’s Hispanic population is not the left-leaning monolith that some Democratic strategists wish it to be.

It is a demographic with rich and varied traditions, convictions and aspirations that are increasingly becoming reflected in diverse electoral choices. As Jones put it: “What’s happening in south Texas tells us that some Hispanic areas that the Democratic party has depended on, that were dark blue, may no longer be reliable.”

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The Rio Grande valley is a frontier community that feels cut off from the world around it. It belonged to Mexico until Texas gained independence in 1836, and only joined the US with annexation in 1848.

Spanish remains the first language of many of the valley’s US citizens. A drive through the region passes the usual relentless repetition of corporate behemoths like Walmart and McDonald’s, but also local outlets like El Tigre Food Store and El Pueblo Express Mart.

By the side of the road, crumbling Spanish-style haciendas are painted blue and ochre, bleached under a brutal sun. Military Highway, which tracks the river, runs alongside miles of border wall, some of it constructed noisily by Trump (“Build the wall! Build the wall!”), other portions erected more quietly under Obama.

In the sky above Zapata, a large white blob hangs over the blackbrush. It is a blimp – an aerial radar system on the lookout for drug and human trafficking.

A joke told about the valley is that its people have only two political affiliations: Democratic and conservative Democratic. The region has strong religious and socially conservative traditions: residents tend to be pro-gun, anti-abortion, strongly on the side of law enforcement given the number of jobs locally in border security and policing, and pro-fossil fuel industries.

In the Walmart in Rio Grande City, many of the customers don’t have a vote – some are Mexican citizens who have hopped over the river to shop, others undocumented immigrants. Of those who can vote, many expressed enthusiasm for Trump, others were full of disappointment about the Biden-Harris administration.

“I’m for Trump, sure,” said Gilberto Maldonado, a 21-year-old electrician who described himself as a Democrat. “Economically, Trump’s better for the country, better for everybody.”

Stella Solis, 65, whose family has lived for at least five generations in the valley, said she was with Trump too. “I don’t like what Biden has been doing, all these people coming over the border from Mexico. Trump would give more help to people, when Biden has done nothing for us.”

Carmen Castillo, 44, a registered Democrat, is not going to vote. Speaking with the Guardian in Spanish, she explained she would never vote for Trump because of his lack of morals, but she had the same criticism as Solis about the past four years, saying that the current administration “hasn’t done anything for us”.

Abel Prado, a Democratic operative in the valley, told the Guardian that since Biden stepped aside last month to make way for Kamala Harris there had been a leap in confidence. Within days of Biden’s announcement the inbox of the Hispanic civic engagement group he co-founded, Cambio Texas, had filled up with offers to volunteer in registering people to vote.

“There’s renewed enthusiasm, a new general swagger of the people I work with in this space,” he said.

Opinion polls conducted in key battleground states since the switch to Harris suggest that what Prado is detecting in the valley may be part of a wider shift. A survey of 800 Latino voters released this week by Somos Pac based on seven swing states has Harris leading Trump commandingly by 55% to 37%.

Prado himself is one of the rarer breed of progressive Democrats in south Texas. He said his personal politics were “extremely radical” but he keeps many of his views private because it could harm his ambitions to build a broad coalition.

“People think that because this place is a Democratic stronghold they can walk into any meeting with piercings all over their nose and rainbow hair and fit in just fine. The exact opposite is true.”

He said that Trump’s projected image as a strongman resonates in the valley among the children of immigrants who have had to make their own way in life and for whom family is supremely important. But Prado also thinks the most regrettable aspect of Trump’s impact in the valley is that it has got people to think that “just because somebody else enjoys something, they took it from you”.

It’s also divided the community, setting residents against each other despite their common heritage. “You would think that having such strong Mexican roots would give people empathy towards those who come after them. But there’s one thing that people in the Rio Grande valley love doing, and that’s pulling up the ladder after they’ve reached the top.”

Prado has heard such sentiments from his oldest brother, a hardcore Trump supporter. He recalls a conversation with him at a barbecue early on in Trump’s presidency in which his brother began ranting about “illegal immigrants” and the need to “send them all back”.

Prado’s parents were born in Mexico and entered the US illegally. They gained citizenship under Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty.

Prado said to his brother: “Bro, who do you think you are? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for people like that. Have you forgotten your parents, your aunts and uncles, all these countless people who came here illegally?”

He hasn’t spoken to his brother since 2019.

***

The change that Trump has brought to the valley is etched into the individuals who now follow him. Literally so, in the case of Marcus Canales, who about a year into Trump’s presidency tattooed his arms with patriotic designs. “We the people” now dominates one arm, “In God we trust” the other.

Canales, 56, was a committed Democrat until his late 40s, just like his parents before him. His grandparents crossed the river into the US as undocumented immigrants and his parents, born in Texas, were passionate Democrats after Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal gave them hope during the Great Depression.

Yet Canales is now solidly in Trump’s camp, to an extent, he said, that would make his late parents “turn in their graves”. The change came with Trump’s 2016 campaign when Canales was drawn to the real estate developer because “we saw him talking as a businessman, not a politician”.

Canales started asking questions, he said, about how it was that Democrats have run the valley for generations and yet it remains among the poorest parts of the country. A 2017 report found that 68% of children in the valley live in high-poverty neighbourhoods, compared with 18% statewide.

Like many valley residents the Guardian spoke to, Canales has bought the line peddled repeatedly by Trump that as president he presided over the “greatest economy the world has ever seen” (a claim rated “false” by factcheckers). “Look at what Trump did for our economy,” Canales said.

“He concentrated on the energy sector, and they started drilling, and jobs started popping up all over the place. And all of a sudden a lot of people are getting very good-paying jobs.”

Canales complained by contrast about the economy under Biden and the high cost of food and goods. The inflation rate has in fact declined dramatically since its 2022 peak of 9.1% and now stands at 3%, yet opinion polls conducted for the Guardian show most voters wrongly believe it is still rising.

Canales said that the Biden-Harris administration was “printing money, devaluing our dollar, you have inflation in the valley and we’re earning less, we’re getting poorer”.

Religion is another critical factor. Opinion polls suggest that Trump’s popularity in Texas is especially high among born-again Christians .

According to the TxHPF poll, Trump held a clear lead within this religious community over Biden of 61% to 18%. Evangelical preachers have led the charge, urging their worshippers to back Trump.

Jorge Tovar, pastor of Jordan River church in Laredo, is busy organising next month’s Trump Train. He was a Democrat until 2018, when he said he converted to Trump’s side after a policy clash at Laredo city council over LGBTQ+ rights.

The council had proposed a new ordinance that would have banned discrimination at work and in housing based on sexual orientation and gender identity; Tovar and other religious leaders successfully blocked the measure.

“Ever since then, the Lord woke me up to get involved,” Tovar told the Guardian. “He said I had been neglectful in my civic duty, voting without even researching the candidate. He showed me that they are pushing God out with their laws, but we can keep God in Texas if we go back to the America that we had when Trump was president.”

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The rise of Trump across the Rio Grande valley presents Democratic leaders and activists with a conundrum. In recent years hopes have risen that Texas – in which no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994 – might be turned purple, based on its changing demographics.

But if Trump continues to grow in the Rio Grande valley all hope of that dies. The Democrats would lose a vital repository of votes upon which statewide success depends.

Beto O’Rourke has articulated the dream of a purple Texas perhaps more forcefully than anybody, having come close to defeating the Republican US senator Ted Cruz in 2018. (He then ran for governor in 2022 and was handily beaten by the incumbent Greg Abbott.)

“I think Democrats have historically taken the Rio Grande valley for granted,” O’Rourke told the Guardian. “Republicans saw an opportunity, they’re hungry, and they’ve gone after it, investing money and running strong candidates with resources behind them.”

He added: “For the first time in my lifetime you are seeing real contested elections between Republicans and Democrats in the valley, and it’s painful for my party.”

O’Rourke hopes that events here will act as a wake-up call for the national Democratic party to listen more carefully to the hopes and concerns of local people. “National Democrats have tended to talk to Hispanic communities about being pro-immigration, when here in the valley there’ll be families who have been on this side of the Rio Grande river for seven generations, and they’re like, ‘What the hell are you talking to me about immigration for, what I care about is the economy and world-class public schools’.”

Prado of Cambio Texas agrees. He criticises Democratic party strategists from Austin or Washington DC of coming to the valley with their own sets of priorities without listening to the actual wants and needs of local people.

“They parachute people in from outside, draw their salaries, lose the races, and then they go back to wherever they came from – leaving us here to pick up the pieces.”

Such disconnect poses an existential threat for Jonathan Gracia, who is running as the Democratic party’s candidate in a high-priority contested race for a Texas House seat in district 37. The makeup of the constituency means Gracia should have the edge over his Republican rival, but that lead is threatened by Trump’s soaring popularity.

Gracia reckons that he’s knocked on about 4,000 doors in the district in the past month in hardcore Democratic-Hispanic neighborhoods. By his estimation, about 7% of those households, all of them longtime Democrats, told him they were voting for Trump – a proportion that if it spilled over into his race would wipe out his advantage.

His challenge is to bring those 7% back into the Democratic fold. “I need to win their hearts and minds,” he said.

To do that, he begins by listening to people’s concerns. He hears complaints about rising prices and the economy, which he responds to by stressing that new jobs are being created in the valley with the building in Brownsville of launch facilities for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a new liquid natural gas (LNG) export plant which Gracia promotes against the protests of environmentalists.

In terms of his messaging, he avoids any discussion of social issues such as abortion or LGBTQ+ rights. “That’s a loser,” he said. Instead, he stresses that he is pro-business, pro the creation of good-paying jobs, pro-law enforcement.

It’s a formula that few in the Democratic party in New York or Chicago or San Francisco would recognise. But it’s worked in the valley for decades.

The question is: how long can it hold?

Back in Zapata, Anna Holcomb is not only dusting off her truck before next month’s Trump Train, she’s also preparing to campaign for a couple of Republican candidates standing for county seats. It’s the first time in her lifetime that Republicans have run for local office.

It’s characteristic of the valley’s complex politics that Holcomb remains a registered Democrat. She said she doesn’t even like Trump: “I couldn’t stand him as a TV personality, every time he came on I would switch the channel. I still don’t like his personality, his arrogance, his mouth.”

But she’ll be voting for him in November. “I vote for him because I believe he’s the guy that can get the job done.”