On a June morning in 2022, Mayra Flores stood before the U.S. Capitol to take the oath of office as a Republican congresswoman. Born in Burgos, Tamaulipas, Mexico and raised in South Texas, Flores had just flipped Texas’s 34th congressional district—a region long held by Democrats and over 90% Latino. Her election was lauded as historic: she became the first Mexican-born woman to serve in Congress. But her victory represented more than a single breakthrough. Flores ran on a platform of “God, Family, Country,” championed hard line immigration enforcement, decried abortion, and criticized COVID-era mandates. Her political ascent marked the rise of a new kind of Latina conservatism—young, insurgent, and unflinchingly right-wing.[1] Flores wasn’t alone. Alongside Latina Republicans like Maria Elvira Salazar, Monica De La Cruz, and Anna Paulina Luna, she symbolized the emergence of a Latina constituency who embrace nationalism, economic individualism, and social traditionalism—and who are increasingly finding a political home in the GOP. Often dismissed as anomalies or even as dupes of white conservative movements, these women are instead emblematic of something much larger: the development of Latino conservatism as a visible, coherent, and diverse political force.
This special series of Latinx Talk, which will appear here over the next four weeks, is curated by myself and Daniel HoSang and examines Latino conservatism not just as a surprising electoral trend or social media phenomenon, but as a multi-generational tradition of political thought and action. At a time when much of the media treats Latino conservatism as a recent or baffling turn, the essays in this collection seek to explore its roots, tensions, complexities, expressions, and aspirations.
Latino conservatism is neither new nor reducible to Trumpism. While Donald Trump captured a historically high share of the Latino vote in 2020, he is far from the first Republican president to court Latino voters. As historian Geraldo Cadava has shown in his book The Hispanic Republican, Latino Republicans have been organizing, voting, and theorizing for decades—often in coalition with movements for racial uplift, religious revival, Cold War anti-communism, and small-business advocacy. As far back as the 1960s, Republican outreach programs targeted Mexican American communities in the Southwest, Cuban exiles in Florida, and Puerto Ricans in the Northeast, framing the GOP as the party of order, opportunity, and strong moral values.[2]
And yet, there is something distinct about this moment. New demographics, platforms, and coalitions are reshaping what Latino conservatism looks like. In South Florida, multiple diasporas—Cuban, Venezuelan, Colombian, Nicaraguan—are finding common ground around a potent anti-socialist identity. In South Texas, working-class Mexican Americans are increasingly drawn to appeals that emphasize nationalism, Christianity, and patriarchal values. In digital spaces, young influencers, pastors, and content creators promote a hybrid politics that blends traditionalism and moral certainty with modern aesthetics that capture large online audiences.
Support for Trump, and right-wing politics more broadly, has not been confined to Latino communities. In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump achieved notable gains among Black and Asian American voters. According to AP VoteCast, 16% of Black voters supported Trump, doubling his 2020 share of 8%. Among Asian American voters, Trump’s support increased to 39%, up from 34% in 2020, as reported by NBC exit polls. Growing research on the multiracial right shows that it isn’t just electoral shifts. The rightward turn is also borne out in nonwhite megachurches, social media platforms, nationalist movements, and elected officials.
It is also apparent that the support for Trump and right-wing politics is not simply a flash in the pan. The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term, many communities have faced heightened fear and uncertainty due to increasingly aggressive immigration policies, including expanded deportations and the proposed “Office of Remigration,” which critics argue aligns with far-right ideologies. While some may assume that Latinos who voted for Trump are now suffering from buyer’s remorse—the polls reflect a different reality. A Civiqs/Daily Kos poll, conducted in mid-May 2025 found a 15-point increase in Trump’s approval rating amongst Hispanic voters—up to 57 percent from 42 percent in April of 2025.[3] Polling on the topic has been admittedly mixed but at least one other poll found a Hispanic approval of Trump grew by 22-percentage points over the course of May 2025. Latino right-wing politics are as enduring as they are evolving.
The contributors to this special series explore these dynamics with nuance and depth, moving beyond the polls and soundbites to ask: What are the cultural and spiritual grammars of Latino conservatism? What issues animate it? What contradictions shape it? And what futures does it imagine?
The Essays
The interdisciplinary group of essays that will appear here over the next few weeks contribute to the growing body of scholarship examining Latinos and the right.
The Latino right, while it has long historical roots, is also a dynamic and evolving group of people and institutions. This is significant because, as scholar Chelsea Ebin argues, conservatism is not simply about the conservation of a past order or, as she puts it, they have “not only reacted and responded to progressive gains; they have also sought to produce a new and different political future. They are not merely reactionary. They are visionary.”[4] The same is true of the Latino right. As political scientist Samantha Acuña argues in this special issue, figures like Nayib Bukele are not necessarily interested in the preservation of a past form of politics. Instead, Bukele, who fashions himself as a millennial Donald Trump, embraces the strongman archetype of Latin American history alongside the cryptocurrency, social media trolling, and a zealous commitment to “law and order.” Bukele’s presidency both harkens back to a long history of U.S.-installed strongmen in Latin America and looks forward to a new kind of conservatism that mobilizes new technologies to strengthen its authoritarian grip.
Similarly, as Elizabeth Torres-Griefer’s work on right-wing Latina influencers in this special series suggests—the Latino, or in this case the Latina, right is generating new scripts about identity and politics that look quite different than earlier generations of conservative politics. As Elizabeth Torres-Griefer’s essay shows, these young Latina elected officials are not operating in a vacuum. There are conservative Latina influencers who are buoying their success and, like these elected officials, using the language of female empowerment to talk about their conservative ideology. Theirs is a distinctly “Latina” form of conservatism that, as Torres-Griefer argues, is rooted in a fusion of conspirituality, digital organizing, and the language of Latina empowerment.
One important contribution of the essays in this series is demonstrating how the growth of Latino conservatism has moved beyond longstanding Latino settlement sites. As historian Emiliano Aguilar writes in his essay for this special issue, the 2022 election of Guatemalan American Republican Diego Morales as Indiana’s Secretary of State, suggests that, as Aguilar puts it, there is a “New Latino Republican” in conservative politics. This new Republicanism, however, cannot be reduced to Trumpism alone. Sociologist Roger Cadena, in his essay for this special issue demonstrates that many Latino Republicans actually reject Trumpism at the same time they embrace Republican Politics. His piece examining Latino Republicans who did not vote for Trump reveals how Latinos are creating new visions of the political right, even as they draw on older traditions.
Authors in this collection also examine what drives Latino attitudes and political behavior. One important shift in Latino identification is around religion. A report by the Pew Research Center found that Catholic affiliation among Latinos declined from 67% in 2010 to 43% in 2022 and during that same period Evangelical Protestant identification rose from 12% to 15%. Although the increase in Evangelical affiliation is modest, it reflects a broader trend visible across Latin America as well, where Catholicism’s influence is declining while Evangelicalism gains ground.
Importantly, the gap between the decline in Catholic affiliation and the more limited rise in Evangelical identification suggests that many Latinos are moving toward other forms of belief or nonbelief—many of which do not necessarily align with the political conservatism often associated with Evangelicalism.[5] Still, the growth of Evangelical institutions globally—often blending missionary efforts with formal political engagement—helps explain the increasing political relevance of this religious shift.
As Manuel Rodriguez finds in his essay for this special issue, “Latinx evangelical Protestants are more likely to identify with a conservative ideology than non-evangelicals.” His essay argues that the changing religious demographics of the Latino community, both in the growth of evangelicals and “religiously unaffiliated” segment (which grew from 10% in 2010 to 30% in 2022), has also begun to reshape Latino political identity.[6]
The success of Trump’s campaign is as much a story of changing Latino political ideologies as it is one of active recruitment. As the work of Fernando Severino and Christopher Terry in this special issue show, even virulently anti-immigrant groups like America First Legal, the law firm co-founded by Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s harshest anti-immigration legislation, was running Spanish-language radio ads in Latino districts to support the election of Donald Trump. Other examples include Donald Trump’s ad that featured a song by the salsa group Los 3 de Habana entitled, “Yo voy a votar por Donald Trump.”
While electoral politics necessarily drive a great deal of the focus on Latinos and the right, we must also look beyond electoral politics to think expansively about the manifestations of conservative thought and ideology amongst Latinos. This means that while, of course, the ballot box remains an important litmus test in the political visions of Latinos so too do things like the music they listen to, the ways they worship, and the social media they consume (and produce). Conservative politics take place in many arenas far from a voting booth and that is true amongst Latinos as well. Therefore, this special issue takes special care to highlight the various spaces that conservative politics emerge amongst Latinos.
Cruz, for example, traces the transnational role that stadiums have played as schoolhouses of anti-communism and right-wing politics in the U.S. and Cuba. Amanda Martinez and Diaz both turn to musical production to think about the transforming political destinies of Latinos. Looking at the country music industry’s efforts to recruit Latino listeners, Martinez shows how this historically conservative music industry has sought to profit from, without meaningfully transforming, the underlying whiteness of the country music industry. Diaz, in turn, looks to reggaetón and how this musical genre long associated with insurgent and progressive politics has, in recent years, also seen a growing number of reggaetonéros embracing conservative politics and conservative politicians embracing reggaetón.
Raúl Perez extends the argument about the role of culture in shaping Latino political ideology by looking at the role of racist humor in Latino communities. Perez provocatively looks at how this racist humor cuts across party lines.
Conclusion
Taken together, the essays in this collection reveal that Latino conservatism is not a contradiction. It is a tradition with diverse expressions and expanding influence. It draws from Catholic and Evangelical teachings, Cold War geopolitics, cultural nationalism, and digital media. It manifests not only in voting behavior but in sermons, songs, stadiums, and selfies. It is not monolithic—nor is it simply reactive. Latino conservatives are not merely rejecting progressive ideals; they are building alternative visions of the good life, anchored in order, hierarchy, and faith.
At the same time, these essays do not offer a romanticized or uncritical portrait. They pay close attention to the exclusions and dangers that often accompany conservative politics: the embrace of increasingly authoritarian regimes at home and abroad, the vilification of migrants, the deployment of gender and sexuality as moral battlegrounds, and the alignment with white supremacist ideologies. However, the authors in this issue take seriously the effort to examine Latino conservatives as thinkers, agents, and historical actors.
As work by political theorist Cristina Beltrán shows, “Latino” has never been a unified category. The political alignments of this group are constantly shifting and that includes Latino conservatives.[7] This special issue of Latinx Talk provides readers with analyses that move beyond the idea that Latino conservatives are statistical outliers or media curiosities. What if Latino conservatism is not new, not surprising, and not marginal? What if it is—and has always been—a constitutive part of Latino political life?
As the essays in this issue show, to understand Latino conservatism is not simply to map a voting bloc. It is to confront the multiplicity of political visions that circulate within Latino communities—visions that challenge dominant narratives of what it means to be Latino, and what it means to be conservative.
Endnotes
[1] Mayra Flores Is Sworn In To Congress. June 21, 2022. YouTube video from Forbes News.
[2] Cadava, Geraldo. The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump. Ecco, 2021. Francis-Fallon, The Rise of the Latino Vote.
[3] “CIVIQS National Politics Survey for DailyKos.” CIVIQS, May 2025. https://civiqs.com/documents/Civiqs_DailyKos_banner_book_2025_05_x3b1sp.pdf.
[4] Ebin, Chelsea. The Radical Mind: The Origins of Right-Wing Catholic and Protestant Coalition Building. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2024. 54.
[5] For more on the diverse religious practices amongst Latinos, especially the turn towards religious practices that resist, rather than embrace, these conservatizing trends: Theresa Delgadillo, Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative (Duke 2011); Luis D. León, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life and Death in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands (Univ of California Press, 2004); Lara Medina, Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Practices and Healing Practices (University of Arizona Press, 2019); Aisha Beliseo-De Jesús, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion (Columbia University Press, 2015).
[6] Pew Research Center. 2025. “2023-24 U.S. Religious Landscape Study Interactive Database.” doi: 10.58094/3zs9-jc14
[7] Beltrán, Cristina. The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Featured Photo Credit: Mayra Flores Is Sworn In To Congress. June 21, 2022. YouTube video from Forbes News.