Is the United States the latest authoritarian regime in the Americas?

Hello, Carlos De Loera here. This will be my last edition of the Latinx Files for now, as I will be handing the reins back to Fidel Martinez next week. It’s been fun leading this newsletter for the past couple of months. I’m honored that Fidel trusted me with taking care of his work baby while he took care of his IRL baby.

It’s become a common saying that everyone in the United States is “living in unprecedented times.”

The Times is no stranger to the saying. Neither is the other Times. It’s even been meme-ified, with many people online expressing that they are tired of living through unprecedented times.

Raucous election cycles, a pandemic, an insurrection, a litany of mass shootings, government shutdowns, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, landmark Supreme Court decisions, recall elections and special elections — all occurrences that have marked these unprecedented times in the U.S.

But when looking at these events through the lens of the history of the Americas, they all seem to follow a familiar playbook.

“It’s a movie that we have seen already and it’s so frustrating,” Paula Ávila-Guillén, the executive director of the Women’s Equality Center, told The Times when discussing the chaos taking place in the U.S.

“You just need to look at the history of some countries that maybe you have never thought you would become — and realize that you are becoming them, but when you’re plagued with American exceptionalism it’s really hard [to recognize].”

Ávila-Guillén grew up in Colombia, where she became a lawyer, and passed the bar exam in New York. She previously worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights as an advocacy strategist and is an active member of the Green Wave movement: a feminist movement for the decriminalization of abortion, which originated in Argentina and has spread throughout the world.

She has been a strident observer of authoritarian regimes throughout the Americas and identifies the key pieces of legislation that tip countries toward an autocratic society. Up until recently, she was hesitant to label the actions of the Trump administration as an authoritarian — but one of Trump’s latest presidential memorandums tipped the scales for her.

Issued on Sept. 25, NSPM-7 — titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” — authorizes government-wide investigations into non-profits, activists, their donors and funders by using the vague labels of “terrorism” and “conspiracy against rights,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The directive expressly states that it enables the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to “coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law.”

“This is exactly the same thing that many other authoritarian regimes have done in the past,” Ávila-Guillén said. “By threatening [human rights activists] that anything that we could say could be seen as domestic terrorism is a very specific tactic to dismantle and discredit the work that we do and that was also a tactic that many regimes that have leaned to the right have used in the past.

“There was a time in Colombia and in Peru, and again in Argentina, Chile and Brazil, where being a human rights defender or women’s rights defender was seen as just belonging to the left, and therefore political, and therefore you become a target. And that’s exactly what that missive is doing.”

Reflecting on how such regimes tend to choose their first targets, Ávila-Guillén noted that they always start with what they perceive to be the weakest points of society — and that usually involves targeting women’s rights.

“When women are just simplified by our reproduction, and that’s the only value that we add to society, we are not seen as leaders,” she said. “It’s harder for us to re-initiate some of those changes and revolution of changes. So they always start with with women and with regulating our bodies.”

Naturally, Ávila-Guillén argued, the next target in line would be transgender people as they challenge societal norms and often stand at the intersection of healthcare and bodily autonomy. The Colombian attorney pointed out that the current administration’s continued attention and antagonism toward such a small, minority population would be used, in part, as a distraction from Trump’s other legislation, like last week’s federal budget reallocation.

Ongoing ICE raids, the disappearance of hundreds of ICE detainees, targeting the Latinx community, regulating trans and child-bearing bodies, demonizing autism and deeming fat bodies “a bad look” all make one thing clear to Ávila-Guillén.

“It’s white supremacy. It’s an ideal of what people should look like, and it’s rhetoric that’s also helpful for them when they are literally disappearing immigrants,” she said. “Everybody is going to wake up one day and wonder how it’s possible that we let so many people disappear, how it’s possible that we let so many people be in prison for so long without due process. And it’s because while we were talking about fat people, about trans issues, they were doing [those] deeds, and it’s very hard to pay attention.”

She explained the psychological process of allowing authoritarianism to reign freely. The first part is that people must actively live in denial, because accepting it would involve making an effort to change things. The next part that people are being bombarded with narratives that point the finger at immigrants for all problems — not at “capitalism, corporations or corruption.” The key element of this section of the psychological process is dehumanizing the “other”; the final part is the devaluation of the truth.

She drew parallels between the Trump administration and that of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, as well as Javier Milei in Argentina.

“They started with the press, by saying it is not legitimate. ‘The truth doesn’t exist anymore. The press is propaganda,’” Ávila-Guillén said. “They start targeting young men to make them believe that the reason they are struggling is because of women’s progress. Milei threatened to eliminate legal abortion in Argentina and Bukele has promised to keep El Salvador’s total abortion ban. Both of them also have started dismantling of programs to protect those who are more vulnerable.”

The good news is that she believes that it’s not too late for people to recognize what is happening and to do something about. Her weapons of choice for combating authoritarianism? Skepticism and the truth.

“The most important step right now is that we get out of our bubbles of information and start relying a lot more on good journalism,” Ávila-Guillén said. “You need to start questioning the things that you thought were not possible, because legally, maybe they are possible. And as you see, there are multiple presidents who have reformed constitutions in every country to stay in power longer... or they have found another way. When the system becomes questionable and legality becomes questionable, there are no [more] hard truths and hard no’s. That’s why it’s so important to to be able to fight back now, while we can still do it.”

But don’t expect politicians to be the ones to quell authoritarianism, Ávila-Guillén advised. Community members are the ones that are more likely to make an immediate impact in helping and protecting their neighbors from the thumb of the government. In her view, it’s the friend from across the street that drives his neighbor across state lines to get an abortion; or the activists that drive ICE agents out of their neighborhood to protect the local street vendors that can make the biggest differences.

“Don’t comply in advance. You wait until you’re forced to it. Recognize that we might be afraid, but also that we are not alone, that we have tons of people who are showing up in multiple events and in multiple forms and understanding in which way you can show up,” she said.

“Maybe you can only share info on social media. Maybe you can support some funds that are collecting money for immigrants or women who are traveling to other places to have abortions. Maybe you can serve virtually as a translator. There is no one, exclusive way to help. But the most important thing is sharing good sources of information, because the priority for us to get out of this system is of us to all start seeing the same level of real, truthful information of what is happening and to not turn a blind eye.”

Stories we read this week that we think you should read

Unless otherwise noted, all stories in this section are from the L.A. Times.

Immigration and the border

• Man pleads guilty to throwing Molotov cocktail at deputies during L.A. protest
• Trump wants to use U.S. cities as military ‘training grounds.’ Can judges stop him?
• There’s no nice way to deport someone. But Trump’s ICE is hosting a cruelty Olympics
• Immigration officials could soon reopen DACA to first-time applicants
  
• California, other states again sue Trump administration for tying aid to immigration laws
  
• Immigrants decry conditions at former prison, ICE’s largest detention center in California
  
• Florida received more immigrants per capita than any other state under Biden (AP)
• Hundreds of Iranians held on U.S. immigration charges will be deported to Iran, Tehran official says (AP)
• Veteran U.S. attorney in California insisted Border Patrol follow a court order. Then she was fired
  
• ICE Agents Assault Group of Reporters Documenting Arrests at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan (Democracy Now!)

• Chicago Activist on Organizing Community ICE Patrols as Trump Escalates Immigration Crackdown (Democracy Now!)

Arts and Entertainment

• At the L.A. LGBT Center, the ‘Queerceañera’ rewrites a cultural tradition
  

• Bad Bunny will star in the Super Bowl LX halftime show. But will his fans be safe?

• What to tell your kids if they want a career in Hollywood
  
• West Side Story gets the Los Angeles Opera treatment
• Bad Bunny will perform Super Bowl LX’s halftime show, likely in Spanish. Cue the MAGA meltdown
• Horror queen Mariana Enriquez explores intriguing cemeteries in captivating essays
  
• How Latino filmmakers are remaking classic horror films with immigrant twists (USA Today)
• PEN America warns of rise in books ‘systematically removed from school libraries’ (NPR)
  
• Univision Goes Dark on YouTube TV (Variety)
• Cannibal and the Headhunters founder and L.A. Chicano rock pioneer dies

And a parting gift from Carlos:

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“And as our lives change, come whatever/We will still be friends forever...”

(Jackie Rivera / For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)