Frandley Denis Julien recalled the years of Jean Claude Duvalier’s regime in his native Haiti when he saw that the federal aid checks (stimulus checks), which the U.S. government sent in April to some 80 million people amid the coronavirus pandemic, bore the signature of Donald Trump. Julien remembers that when he was 10 years old, Duvalier used to drive around throwing money at people through the car window. This Haitian writer and activist came to the United States 14 years ago, with a high school diploma, from the country Trump called a “shithole country.”
Franco Caliz Aguilar, a community leader, thought about his country Nicaragua when he saw the military deployment to counter the protests that are still going on in the United States. During the first period of Daniel Ortega‘s Sandinista regime, from which his parents and himself as a child fled to seek political asylum in the 1980s, Ortega also deployed the National Guard to suppress the protests in which his parents had been participated. Now Caliz sees black hawk helicopters flying over the demonstrations or Trump’s threat to deploy the National Guard, this time in his host country. He can’t help to thin about his parents’ unrest.
For Leopoldo Martínez, it has been inevitable to recognize the similarities between Donald Trump and Hugo Chavez, the head of the regime that forced him into exile from his country, Venezuela, 15 years ago. The most recent resemblance was Trump’s threat to CNN with legal action, because the outlet published a poll that shows him at a disadvantage to Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Chávez, Leopoldo Martínez recalls, used to demand CNN that it not criticize him, as, Martínez said, the CNN itself commented in a riposte to Trump. Martínez is the founder of IQ Latino, and he was a deputy in the National Assembly in Venezuela. He went to the United States with his family when they saw the imminent persecution of Chavismo against him. He is currently a member of the national leadership of the Democratic Party.
Debby Mucarsel-Powell was 14 years old when she came to the United States from Ecuador. In the 2018 elections, she became the first South American-born congresswoman to be elected to that position. In 2019, the Democratic Party swore her in as the representative of Florida’s 26th district, which is mainly inhabited by Latino communities. “Half of my district actually was born in a different country […]. They know what it is when a man wants to grab power, hold on to that power, stripping away at our democratic institutions putting people in danger”. The representative states that Trump attacks “that comes against himself, his powers and his senses.” “We’ve seen it from the very beginning,” she says.
Frank Mora, a Cuban-American, director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Florida International University, has studied parallels between populist regimes in the academia. In his private circle, he also knows how they work, from the experiences of his family and friends in Cuba with the Castro’s. One of those parallels, he says, is incompetence. “The disaster mismanagement, corruption, and the political priority given to staying in power and the expense of good governance.”
In his opinion, although Donald Trump and his government did not cause the Covid-19, nor the current economic recession, or the racial problems in the United States that have emerged with the murder of George Floyd, the president’s “mismanagement” did worsen the effects of the pandemic, deepened the recession and incited the unresolved problems of racism.
These five immigrants or descendants of immigrants, who in their host country have followed the path of activism and politics, met for a webinar to discuss the “recent efforts of the Trump administration to undermine democratic institutions.”
Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign team for the November presidential election organized this talk. Its participants endorsed Biden’s candidacy with their full support.
Populisms come together
Frandley Denis Julien says that as a Haitian-American he has experienced the Trump presidency as a “double-layer tragedy.” “The first layer is constant disrespect,” he says. The hallmark of it was Trump calling his country and other countries in Africa “shithole countries.”
The second layer is the reminiscence of what he experienced in Haiti, “the feeling I have every day is like it is taking me back to Haiti, to some of the darkest days of Haiti.”
Julien sees it, he says, in the intimidation of the media and journalists; in the “demonization and dehumanization” of political opponents; in Trump’s “fear-mongering”, and in what to him is the strongest similarity to his country’s past, “the constant lie.” ” Some people would say that the president lies about everything, big or small, because he cannot tell the truth. But the reality is that lying is a part of a dictator’s plan, because if you can lie about everything if you can disfigure the truth and have enough people in the population to accept what you are feeding them, you can do everything. You can destroy the institutions, you can do everything,” he argues.
Leopoldo Martínez recalls that the reason he “strongly confronted Maduro or Chávez” in Venezuela is that he saw “how their plan was gradually undermining democracy. He then sought out the United States as an option for his exile because of its “strong democracy with strong institutions” and because of “the mobility and opportunities it offered to immigrants.” But in the last four years, with Donald Trump, he has seen all that undermined as well.
“This is the way they do things: they lie, deny, defy, repress, confront and then demand loyalty of all institutions to them for one reason: they’re not interested in resolving the nation’s problem. Their only interest is galvanizing support around them to impose their political agenda above the Constitution, above the law,” Martinez said.
“The thought of an American [president] acting like Chávez, Maduro, Castro or Bolsonaro, and targeting free speech and spreading misinformation, would have been unthinkable just a few years ago,” Caliz Aguilar said.
The Nicaraguan activist drew another similarity between Trump and the Ortega regime, this time the second current one. Ortega, the activist points out, “defied science” when he called for a march to show a strong image in the midst of the pandemic. “His image is more important than the lives of the people,” Caliz Aguilar says. Trump, according to his view, is doing something similar by moving the Republican national convention venue to Jacksonville, because in North Carolina he would have restrictions from the state government to prevent the massive spread of the coronavirus. “Donald Trump wants a convention with no mask no social distancing and no respect for science or facts.”
Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell states that in her district many people have fled from dictatorships, in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In this “unprecedented” crisis and the most serious “that we have faced in our generation,” while at the same time “our nation is also dealing with police brutality and systemic racism,” she says, Donald Trump “abandoned America in its highest moment of need”. Instead, according to Mucarsel-Powell, he responds “with a playbook similar to the playbook of the caudillos and dictators in Latin America.”
According to Frank Mora, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere, the priority of populist regimes to preserve power leads them to deepen polarization in times crisis like the present. “This is not just typical of Donald Trump. We see it across the world in many similar regimes, particularly in Latin America. In the United States we are seeing a convergence of crises and it is at these moments when leadership is shown and demonstrated […]. The preexisting conditions and the lack of leadership are beginning to surface very significant ways,” he explains
According to Leopoldo Martínez, right now the U.S. is holding “a referendum on Trump’s management” of the crisis.
“We are a nation that is scared and in pain, with open wounds. We need someone who is willing to step up and unite us,” Rep. Mucarsel-Powell added. “Donald Trump is not equipped for this moment in America. He cannot deliver on unemployment; he cannot test us on COVID-19 so that we can see if we can reopen; he cannot address the deep racial divisions in our country –he’s actually exacerbating those divisions. And his response is to only use force,” she said.
Frank Mora states that he is concerned “from now on to the election this will only get worse. Because when populists see themselves cornered they double down on polarization.”
Venezuela, Cuba, Latin America
One journalist asked the speakers how relations with Venezuela and negotiations with the Nicolas Maduro regime would look if Trump were to leave the U.S. presidency and Biden were to replace him.
Leopoldo Martínez responded that Biden “has been committed since day one to granting TPS [Temporary Protected Status] to Venezuelans who seek protection and refuge in the United States,” which, he stressed, Trump has not done.
“You can’t claim to care about Venezuela if you don’t care about Venezuelans,” he said. He added that Trump’s actions toward that country have “weakened the international coalition” that Juan Guaidó assembled after he was recognized as interim president, because the U.S. president “has not focused on the goal of the international community, which is to press for free and credible elections with international observation, which is what the coalition wants to see happen in Venezuela.”
In Martinez’s opinion, Trump’s rhetoric “plays on the emotions of Venezuelans, particularly those living in Florida,” and in doing so he has not only weakened the international coalition but also “Guaidó’s internal base.” His proposition has splited the opposition around the fantasy that all the options are on the table. The end result is that today Maduro is stronger, in control of the military, in control of the internal affairs of Venezuela and he is walking his path to continue in power,” Martínez argued.
According to Martínez, if Biden becomes president he will put out a strong international coalition around Juan Guaidó and other members of the Venezuelan opposition, to lead to a credible and fair election in Venezuela as a reunifying solution in that country, and he will also work with his team so that Venezuelans in the U.S. receive the TPS, and consequently, their families in Venezuela can receive help as well.
This is why, Martínez says, “the worst nightmare for Maduro and his colleagues is a Biden presidency.”
To another question about whether a Joe Biden presidency would continue the opening of relations with Cuba –with Biden as vice president, Barack Obama was the first U.S. president to make an official visit to that country–, Frank Mora answered that “Biden has a record of commitment to human rights in our foreign policy.”
“As for Cuba, the commitment to human rights will continue because what interests us, what interests the vice president, is the Cuban people, who have been repressed by a six-decade dictatorship. With Biden, Mora said, the focus would be on giving tools to Cubans living on the island “so that they themselves can begin to define their future.” That means reactivating the relations of Cubans in their country with their relatives in the United States, and not “falling into the wrong policy of just sanctions, which are a tool but not the end.”
According to Mora, Trump “has done everything he can to distance the Cuban people from our friends and families here in the United States while increasing the dependence of the Cuban people on a dictatorial regime.”
And on the prospects for Biden’s relations with Latin America should he become president, Mora brought to the table what Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, “a man of the traditional right in Guatemala,” said on May 21. In a virtual conversation with the Atlantic Council in Washington, the Guatemalan president stated, referring to the handling of the pandemic and the deportation of immigrants from his country who are infected: “This thing about allies with the United States is not true. Guatemala is an ally of the United States, but the United States is not an ally of Guatemala.”
“The president sees the region as a region of threats only and not of opportunities,” Mora said. “It’s true that there are threats, but we must also focus on opportunities. That’s the fundamental difference between Vice President Biden and President Trump,
“Latinos will come out and vote”
Representative Mucarsel-Powell is confident that Latinos in the United States will massively vote in the November election, and more so in her district in Florida –a swing state– where, she says, “70% are Latinos.”
“I’ve been talking to them from the very beginning and the sentiment is overwhelming. They are extremely disappointed with president Donald Trump, they are frustrated, they are hurting,” Mucarsel-Powell says. The causes for this, she lists, are the thousands who have lost their jobs, the lack of access to health care, especially in the pandemic and the lack of access to unemployment benefits. “They are frustrated”, the representative argues, because they are seeing their loved ones getting sick, working without protection, and not being tested for the virus. “We’ve seen people die from Covid in ICE detention centers.”
“The problems affecting my community, which is predominantly Latino and Hispanic, are the same issues affecting Americans all over the country, in a state that has a governor who is a Republican front of Donald Trump. Whatever Trump says happens in Florida”, she added.
For Caliz Aguilar, Trump’s immigration policies are a strong reason for the Latino community in the United States to come out and vote.
“We saw our children, our babies, in cages, like caged by this administration. That is something that remains in the eternal memory of our community,” he said.
Additionally, Caliz Aguilar states, neither Trump nor his party have protected Latinos, who, along with African Americans, are the most hit by the pandemic. Trump administration, he adds, “is destroying public schools and we need education”. And now the housing problem is coming, he warns, with rent and mortgage payments due, “but Trump and the Republicans just want to push another stimulus check.”
About the situation of Latinos in the pandemic, Leopoldo Martínez had given this context in his talk: Latinos and African Americans are not only among those most affected by the pandemic, in their health and in their economy, but they have been essential workers in the crisis that have sustained the functioning of the country. According to Martinez, in the implementation of the aid packages approved by Congress with support from both major parties, “Trump forgot about Hispanic small businesses.”
“Only 12% of Hispanic small businesses have received the paycheck protection program, that is, they had to put people out of work who are even part of their own family. That’s why the unemployment rates in the Hispanic population are so high because this administration was not able to see the drama of the essential workers, the drama of the small business owners who are part of the entrepreneurial minorities of this country, and the drama of the working class in front of the COVID-19. The consequences are economical and social and health care.
“Our people are feeling that pain and that’s why they’re gonna come out and vote,” Caliz continued, “because people understand that at the end of the day they need housing, they need food and they want a brighter future for their kids.”
“They will come out and vote,” Mucarsel-Powell remarked. “We’ve been talking, and Latino leaders all over the country have been talking to Latino voters about why they have to come out, about why this is gonna be the most important elections of their lifetime.”
Frandley Denis Julien sees the November election as “a fight for human dignity and the redemption of the soul of America.”
“For all immigrants, it’s a difficult time to live in America, but I also see an opportunity, because we, as grateful immigrants who owe so much to this country. We have an opportunity to give something back by participating in a movement seeking to redeem the soul of this country,” he said.