While Jerry Reyes was raised the son of undocumented immigrants, the 24-year-old Fresno resident thinks it’s time to close the border and plans to vote for Trump. (Courtesy of the producers of VOCES: Latino Vote 2024)
Jerry Reyes is about to vote in his first presidential election. Even though his parents were undocumented farmworkers from Mexico, the 24-year-old Fresno resident plans to cast his ballot for former President Donald Trump.
“Making America great again is something that has so much power,” Reyes told Andrés Cediel, a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and producer of a new documentary on PBS called VOCES: Latino Vote 2024. The Trump campaign slogan, Reyes said, is about “making sure that the person living in America is put first. It’s for the betterment of you.”
He said his family disagrees with his decision —and his mother has stopped speaking to him — because of Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments about immigrants and the border.
Now, Reyes and other first-time Latino voters from across California are profiled in a video series that accompanies the larger film. VOCES takes an in-depth look at Latino voters around the country to understand what issues will drive their turnout — especially in hotly contested battleground districts.
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Cediel shared some of the project’s main takeaways — about the diversity and influence of Latino voters — during an interview with The California Report Magazine’s host, Sasha Khokha.
Below are excerpts from their conversation. For the full interview on The California Report Magazine, listen to the audio at the top of this story.
On how Latino voters may shape the election:
Andrés Cediel: Latinos are now the second largest electorate in the country [after white ‘non-Hispanic’ voters] and also have large populations in battleground states. That includes Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, even Georgia. And it’s not just the presidential election. Latinos have the power to flip the balance of power in Congress. In California’s Central Valley, there are predominantly Latino districts that could flip because of the Latino vote. This could change the balance of power in the House.
On why the Latino community is not a monolith:
We come in all shades, all races. While the majority of Latinos in California and across the country are of Mexican descent, Latinos on the East Coast predominantly come from Caribbean countries like the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. This also includes Afro-Latinos — a community, which tends to be more educated than the rest of the Latino population but also suffers from greater poverty levels and receives less coverage.
On the Latino evangelical vote:
Latino evangelical Christians are in an interesting position because, in a lot of ways, their political leanings are very similar to white evangelicals, who overwhelmingly are voting for Trump. But the key difference is this issue of immigration. Many Latinos are not comfortable with Trump’s rhetoric and what he’s said about their community, creating a split among Latino evangelical leaders about who they are going to support. At the same time, one of the Latino evangelical Christian leaders that we spoke to was Pastor Samuel Rodriguez, who leads a megachurch in Sacramento. He became friends with Trump and actually gave an invocation at Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
A scene from Rev. Gabriel Salguero’s church, The Gathering, in Orlando. (Courtesy of Bernardo Ruiz)
On gender divides:
As an electorate, Latinos and Latinas tend to be much younger than the rest of the population. And for a lot of young Latina women, reproductive freedom issues are very important. Latinas are also often more educated than their male counterparts and more politically active. We found that issues like abortion and reproductive freedom are top of mind across the board, regardless of where they are in the country or what their religious affiliation is.
Organizer Audrey Peral and son, Francisco, while canvassing in East Las Vegas, Nevada in 2020. (Courtesy of Roberto (Bear) Guerra)
On first-time Latinx voters in California:
We partnered with the California Local News Fellowship to work with newsrooms across the state to find those stories that didn’t make it into the larger film. We profile a first-time voter in Oakland who’s a Mam speaker from Guatemala or a young voter in Santa Ana who’s registering his classmates to vote. And it was important for us to include an Afro-Latino voice in this project, so we spoke with Keyanna Ortiz-Cedeño about why she’s planning to vote for Kamala Harris.
On Latino voters who want tougher border control:
Many second and third-generation Latinos increasingly don’t identify with the immigrant experience. One thing that’s important to note with immigration trends now is we’re seeing many more Venezuelans, Colombians, Haitians, and even Chinese and Russians coming in through the southern border. Folks whose families may have come here a couple of generations ago don’t necessarily identify with these new immigrants, and they don’t have that same feeling of wanting to welcome everybody. And sometimes, they want to shut the border, too.
On working on a film celebrating agency and political power:
A lot of my reporting in the Latino community has been about heartache, abuse, suffering. So, it was really gratifying for this project to be able to go out and talk to people about their hopes and dreams, to hear the political agency that they have and what they want us to do with that power. There is a lot of power in the Latino vote, and people can feel it. And they’re starting to wake up to it.
Team members of Make the Road Action Nevada, who work to organize in immigrant communities. (Courtesy of Roberto (Bear) Guerra)
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