Guerrero: The rise of the MAGA Latino isn’t real, but it could be in 2024. At least, it should be. Not everyone needs to vote for Trump every four years. But those who do need to recognize that this country isn’t going back to the way it used to be.
The first time I tried to imagine my life after a decade of not voting for a president, I was 17. I was a history and English major, so I was used to learning about the American Revolution from professors and reading books about the Civil War. But the war in Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis had me thinking about how America might fall into a period of decline.
I did not vote for Barack Obama in 2008, largely due to the president’s response to the worst recession in history. I grew up in a small liberal college town, but I could not relate with some of the concerns and frustrations of others who still considered Obama one of our country’s greatest presidents.
“I wish I could vote for someone who was more compassionate with people,” I thought, watching him lecture the American people about the importance of not being racist and sexist. “Maybe when it comes to immigration, things are so bad we’ll get a change.”
I spent most of my high school days trying to get a vote for the first time on the American president who best embodied my fears. As I got to college and started to learn about politics, I also learned about history’s two greatest tragedies: how the United States was formed and how it collapsed into violent civil war.
In that same year, in my hometown, I watched a political figure with a similar vision of what America could become become a symbol of hope and strength. In 2012, Donald Trump became the first major-party presidential nominee without my support. For two years, I listened to my friends and family tell me how, “America is awesome” or “You’re not racist enough” — phrases that I understood to mean that I should not believe everything I heard about conservatism, but that I believed in deeply.
I also realized that some things did not change when
