© COPYRIGHT by Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Dedication To my namesakes, Arturo Soto and Ramon Daniel Vásquez MOBILIZING THE U.S. LATINX VOTE: RACE, IDENTITY, AND ORGANIZATION BY Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez ABSTRACT After two decades of close national elections, there has been an effort to mobilize Latinx voters to improve the margins. A wide variety of political actors have conducted these efforts in the last decade since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. During this time, the rise of online and digital technologies has transformed campaigning with more data sources and new strategies developed each year. This dissertation focuses on the role of national Latinx organizations in mobilizing Latinx voters in this period. Specifically, I focus on how audiences are conceptualized, which digital strategies are deployed, and how U.S. Latinx political identity is being made. I use a multi-method and qualitative approach to answer the question of how do U.S. Latinx advocacy organizations shape Latinx identity in the digital era of communication and the racialized public sphere of the 2010s while pursuing their goal of voter mobilization? I use in- depth expert interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis of mediated texts to collect data. I introduce the concept of mediated U.S. Latinx identity as a theoretical framework to understand the new and old formulations of Latinx identity in the United States. Mediated U.S. Latinx identity theory argues the three themes of identity making unique to Latinxs; denationalization, homogenization, and racialization are being transformed by online communication and elite Latinx opinions. Several findings are important to understanding how organizations mobilize Latinx voters, use digital tools, and shape identity. First, organizational stakeholders comprise a new Latinx professional elite. Their educational and social capital is very different from the majority of ii Latinxs. As a result, they tend to adopt the discourses of the upper-middle class, such as political incrementalism, compromise, and belief in the American Dream. They then project their identity onto a mass Latinx audience using digital media. Second, the use of digital tools varies by organizational history and technical capacities. Older groups tend to report information, even while using a variety of digital tools. Newer organizations tend to promote engagement on social media but also email communication. Third, both preceding factors are shaped by the political economy of these groups. Most national Latinx groups are funded primarily by corporate and foundation money. I assert this funding structure constrains organizational politics to small change advocacy and online strategy to the conventional. As a result, Latinx political mobilization ends up being much closer to an elaborate exercise in branding – rather than a genuine social movement. iii PREFACE: ELECTION NIGHT IN WASHINGTON D.C. On the evening of November 8, 2016, I departed my apartment in Washington, DC, to watch the election results downtown. The event where I planned to meet my friends was organized by Voto Latino a national Latinx1 advocacy organization focused on increasing Latinx civic engagement. Like many events in the nation’s capital, it was not too difficult to get into. I secured my invitation though a friend of a friend. I was happy to be around friends and have some free food and drink. Like all my friends, I expected the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, to win easily that night. And like many others across the country, we ended the evening disappointed and confused about what had happened. In the days leading up to the election I had read exciting news coming out of Arizona and Florida regarding early voting. Latinx turnout looked massive and unprecedented. Lines at polling stations in Phoenix and Orlando stretched around the block. News pundits had speculated that the nativist rhetoric of the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, would drive huge increases in Latinx turnout. In Florida the recent immigration of Puerto Ricans from the economically troubled island to the Interstate-4 corridor (Tampa Bay and Orlando) was pointed to as a new factor in the electoral calculus. In Arizona Latinx voters in Maricopa County had the chance to vote out hardline anti- immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio. Early voting results in other states with lots of Latinx voters also looked promising in the days leading up to the election. In Texas there were long lines at polling places in counties like Harris and Bexar. Harris and Bexar have huge populations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Houston and San Antonio, respectively. All these news items, which I manically devoured leading up to election day, gave me an extra spring in my step as I walked to my Metro stop on the 1 I am choosing to use the term Latinx as an all-inclusive term in lieu of the gendered Latino or Latina. I discuss my choice of terminology more extensively beginning on page 16. iv red line in DC. I was also enthused by the larger potential political results: another Democratic president and the flipping of some previously red states, like Arizona. And I was excited by the implications for my academic research. Throughout the 2010s there was general excitement around the changing demographics of the United States. People believed that the growing share of Latinx voters could produce a permanent Democratic majority. I personally had been researching issues around Latinx politics since 2009. Some of my projects focused on the rhetorical framing of Latinxs in politics, national Latinx political organizations, and online social movements. I figured that the 2016 election would conform to my preconceived notions of the rise of Latinx voters and my dissertation would have a nicely tied bow on top of it. As I walked to the Metro station streaming live video from Twitter on my mobile phone, everything looked good. Clinton was still expected to win. I boarded the Metro car and, without data access, let my mind wander as I looked through the window into the dark underground tunnel. I do not remember what I was thinking about. For dramatic purposes I wish I’d had more profound thoughts, but I’ll have to disappoint my dissertation committee here. I felt confident enough about the outcome of the election to not be bothered by too much anxiety. I was most likely thinking about an upcoming presentation in Philadelphia the next day at the National Communication Association. I exited the Gallery Place–Chinatown Metro station and walked over to the event venue. The environment inside immediately shook my confidence, as I could feel the nervousness of the mostly Latinx attendees. While I found some appetizers and a drink, my friend fired off some concerning factoids to me. Results in Kentucky, the first state to report results, showed a trend of voters who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 defecting toward Trump. v I do not need to repeat what transpired afterward. Results rolled in and the crowd at the Voto Latino event began to talk and move with a quick, nervous unease. Most gazed in disbelief at their phones, desperately refreshing their social media feeds for more information. A friend at my table kept peeking in despair at the New York Times probability dial, which slowly ticked towards predicating Trump’s win. Others in the room began trading business cards in anticipation of whatever strange circumstances and shifting alliances might come in the months ahead. Scenes of disbelief and confusion like what I described will probably fill hundreds of dissertations and books over the next few years. The 2016 election scrambled so many expectations across so many fields of thought. There will surely be tomes of political science and communication studies works written about the event. On the train ride to Philadelphia I reflected on my own intellectual journey studying Latinx politics. I realized that my dissertation would have to take a whole new direction in the Trump era. Somewhere along the way I vaguely resolved to understand how Latinxs in the United States would respond to this new political environment. What follows is my own attempt to understand the recent history of Latinx politics online in the United States. My training as a scholar of communication studies informs how the decisions and strategies I observed over a year are interpreted through a system of analysis drawn from communication theory. I also rely on the critical Latinx studies perspective to fill in the gaps missing in mainstream political communication theory. At the same time, I do not come to this project as a dispassionate observer. I am very much invested in the future of Latinxs in the United States. Since 2010 I have been interested in this topic intellectually, but as a Latinx person, I am also a subject of this political process. I also enjoy many social privileges as a researcher. I am associated with a prestigious academic institution and I deploy social capital to move within the spaces I research. I can easily vi code-switch to the professionalized communication styles of elite Latinx actors. The performance of myself such as how I appear, dress, and speak, all make me a perfect insider to study this phenomenon. No doubt I belong in the spaces I enter, and I can seamlessly move in and out. I state my positionality as a researcher here not to argue that others cannot research a topic they are not personally perfectly suited for. Neither do I suggest my knowledge is more authentic or valid than others. Simply, I believe all researchers should be cognizant of where they come from when doing field research. This dissertation is a culmination of research conducted throughout 2017 and 2018, the first months of the Trump presidency.