"Within the landscape of the white American imaginary, there are various constructed archetypes for Latin Americans that have remained firmly embedded for more than a century: Mexican bandoleros, Latin lovers, fiery Latinas, subservient peasants, and dedicated domestics. But these archetypes are constructions based almost exclusively on Latin American nations with geographical proximity to the United States, i.e. Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. In the white American imaginary, Central America is a black hole, a void, an empty space where white people can project their darkest fears. It's an amorphous land mass of untamed jungles filled with rebels, drug lords, and gang bangers that can only be civilized through the iron fist of a banana republic dictator. And so of course, it's a cradle of unknowable creatures, tattooed sub-humans who only live to murder and rape."
On June 18, 2024 at the Republican National Convention, and then again on June 20 at a campaign rally, Donald Trump publicly accused the president of El Salvador (Nayib Bukele) of artificially lowering El Salvador’s crime rates by sending all their “criminals” to the United States. While many journalists and pundits on social media attempted to understand Trump’s statements within the contemporary context of his relationship with Bukele, Trump’s commentary was less about Bukele as an individual, and more about the re-weaponization of racist rhetoric centered on MS-13, and by extension, Central American migrants and their homelands. Presented here is a brief history of how the demonization of Central America contributed to the Trump presidency’s violent and racist anti-immigration platform.
2015 - When Mexico Sends its People…
In June of 2015, Donald Trump descended down from his penthouse into the lobby Trump Tower in New York City. In front of a crowd of journalists, fans, and paid supporters (who were paid $50 to cheer for him and hold up signs), he announced his intention to run for president of the United States on the Republican ticket. Some people in the audience gawked, some cheered, and some were just dumbfounded. Regardless, whatever absurdist and surreal circus atmosphere had been generated in those first few minutes following his announcement, five minutes into Trump’s speech, he launched into the now infamous racist tirade against Mexicans.
What resulted was a conflagration of near universal public condemnation, both in the United States and Latin America. For almost every Latinx person living in the U.S., Donald had become public enemy #1. The controversy not only resulted in Trump losing lucrative deals with NBC and Univision, but he was forced backtrack his vitriol and tone down the anti-Mexican rhetoric for the remainder of his presidential campaign. But he would soon find a new and much easier group to target and vilify.
2016 - The New Enemy of White America
In August of 2016, Donald Trump travelled to Mexico and met up with Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who himself was also a right-wing demagogue and generally reviled in his homeland. While the more prominent topic at this meeting was to discuss U.S.-Mexico border security and Trump’s pet project, the southern border wall, the meeting also served a another purpose: to change the narrative around migration to the U.S. and develop mutual policies of control over the Central American region.
In November of 2016, Donald Trump not only beat Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States, but he also chosen by TIME Magazine as its “Person of the Year.” In the middle of what became his trademark long-winded and meandering manner of babbling, Trump shows TIME journalist Michael Sherer a news magazine article cover local gang violence and makes the following statement following statement:
“They come from Central America. They’re tougher than any people you’ve ever met... They’re killing and raping everybody out there. They’re illegal. And they are finished.”
But unlike his racist statements against Mexicans the prior year, this time not a single major publication reported on this. Not a single Latinx organization or media outlet expressed any outrage. There were no protests, no condemnation, not even any acknowledgement that what Trump had said was wrong. The statement simply defaulted to the status of unchallenged commentary.
2017 - Trump & Mexico Become Friends
A few days after his inauguration as president in January 2017, Trump announced at the Department of Homeland Security his new executive orders on immigration, including the construction of the southern border wall. During his speech, his feelings on Mexico had drastically changed. Now referring to Mexico as an economic and security partner, Trump had shifted the supremacist American imaginary away from vilifying Mexicans (at least temporarily) and turned its eyes to the Central American migrants, mareros, and unaccompanied children. Trump categorized Central America as a new existential threat to both the U.S. and Mexican interests.
That same January of 2017, multiple Mexican news agencies were reporting that the Mexican government was considering using Central American migration as a "bargaining chip" in order to protect Mexican trade and remittances from Mexican migrants in the U.S. Finally on January 24th, Luis Videgaray, Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs admitted on Mexican television that Mexico was willing to continue blocking Central American as long as the U.S. respected Mexican remittances.
From this point forward in the Trump presidency (2016-2020), MS-13 and Central American migrants would become the focal point of his racist rhetoric, and convenient bogeyman to scare white America.
2017 - Animals
Starting in 2017, the Trump administration deployed a rhetoric of "animalization" against MS-13, which was no longer considered just a criminal organization, but a monstrified existential threat to American Christian goodness and integrity. To wit, in a press conference by ICE Director, Thomas D. Hoffman in JULY 2017, MS-13 members were not depicted as whole human beings, but as disembodied pictures of tattooed brown skin. That same month, on Tucker Carlson's program (FOX News) incarcerated gang members were presented to the U.S public as creatures living in squalor in cages. Trump and the White House further perpetuated the racist narrative of total dehumanization.
2018 - Logistics
In JANUARY 2018, Trump announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 200,000+ Salvadorans living in the U.S. They were given one year to get a green card or "self-deport." Doubling down on his odiousness, that same JANUARY, during a meeting in the Oval Office with U.S. Senators to discuss a possible immigration deal, Trump questioned why the U.S. should allow entry to migrants from African nations, Haiti, and El Salvador, which he all categorized as "shithole" countries. In SEPTEMBER of 2020, the Federal Appeals Court finally allowed Trump to end TPS for 330,000 people from 10 countries, which included several African nations, Haiti, and the largest recipient, El Salvador.
In FEBRUARY 2018, the White House held a Law Enforcement Roundtable on MS-13. The following are notable comments made by members of the Trump administration and select members of Congress:
The wholesale criminalization of Salvadoran migrants AND their descendants as well as unaccompanied minors - John Cronan, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice Criminal Division.
Condemnation of programs that provide pathway to residency for children refugees; frustration over inability to access confidential family court records - Angel Melendez, ICE Office, New York.
Frustration over inability to legally deport or prohibit asylum to a migrant who has committed no crime, based solely on the presumption of being a gang member - L. Francis Cissna, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Classification of families housing alleged MS-13 members as “MS-13 families” - Michael McCaul, Congressman (R), Texas, 10th District.
Condemnation of Temporary Protected Status - Lee Zeldin, Congressman (R) New York, 1st District.
2018 - 2020 - Scammers
In NOVEMBER 2018, a caravan of migrants attempted to cross the border at Tijuana. U.S. Border Patrol responded by deploying tear gas on crowds that included children. Trump downplayed this act of violence by claiming the tear gas was "safe" and that migrant parents (assuming they were even the parents, according to him) were intentionally putting children in harm's way to take advantage of U.S. immigration laws. In APRIL 2019, Trump made the claim that asylum seekers were just gang members in disguise, attempting to "scam" the system. Pejorative terminology such as “vile,” “evil,” “monsters,” “vicious,” and “savage” would continue to be part of the Trump vocabulary for the remainder of his presidency.
2022 - A New, But Also Old, Narrative
At the America First Policy Institute Summit in JULY 2022, now former President Trump delivered a meandering keynote address where he moved from advocating the death penalty for drug dealers to decrying how the Biden administration had allowed "millions" of undocumented migrants entry into the U.S.--never mind that Biden KEPT many of Trump's draconian executive orders on immigration. He rambles on about ICE agents getting into a scuffle with MS-13, Central American countries refusing to take deportees back, and him refusing economic aid in retaliation--at which point, he makes the claim that the (corrupt) leaders of these countries intentionally send their criminals to the U.S. If that sounds familiar...
2024 - Precipice
...it's because Trump recycled, almost verbatim, the 2022 speech when he delivered the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18 and at a campaign rally on July 20. Except this time, Trump called out the "young president" of El Salvador as the culprit sending criminals to the United States. Whatever the reasons for Trump doing this, two things are true: 1) since 2019 when Bukele was elected, record numbers of Salvadorans have fled El Salvador (at least 400,000); and 2) Trump is once again re-deploying the tried and true strategy of demonizing Central America to whip up white America into a frenzy and mobilize them to support the Republican Party's anti-immigration platform: "the largest deportation operation in the history [of the U.S.]. Even larger than that of [President Eisenhower]," i.e., the infamous "Operation Wetback."