Defectors

”[Ramos] draws on years of interviews and pages from her reporter’s notebook to cobble together a portrait of the nascent Latino far right — and to elucidate its psychology. It’s an astute premise: to report on how the changing political winds manifest in everyday American life.”—The Washington Post“Ramos’s empathy is formidable. As frightened as she is by the defectors’ politics, she is always curious to learn more.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “Defectors is a deeply reported, surprisingly personal exploration of a phenomenon that is little understood in our politics: The affiliation of Latino voters with causes and candidates that would seem, at first glance, unwelcoming to them. Paola takes us into the lives of Latinos who support presidential candidates with plans for mass deportations or lead efforts to ban books and stop diversity initiatives. She introduces us to Latinos who patrol the border as vigilantes and Latinos who marched on the Capitol on January 6th. From Miami and the Bronx to Arizona, New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley, Paola shows us why the Latino vote is not just increasingly powerful, but increasingly in flux. It turns out the answers are there if you ask the right questions, and that is exactly what Paola does in this terrific book.”—Rachel Maddow, Emmy award-winning host of The Rachel Maddow Show and New York Times bestselling author of Prequel“Defectors…casts aside the misguided notion that Latinos are a monolith and looks at the small but expanding part of the population moving steadily right. Through reporting trips and conversations with experts and psychologists alike, Ramos interrogates the idea that the Latino electorate is aligned with progressive values, writing about an Afro-Latino former Proud Boy leader, a Latino border vigilante, and Latino insurrectionists who participated in the January 6 US Capitol attack. As she persuasively proves, not all white supremacists are white.”—Vogue“Paola Ramos has been studying Latinos as a voter bloc for years. As someone who started her career working in Democratic politics, she’s watched as Latino American voters have been courted and won over by the far-right politics characterized by the MAGA movement. Her new book digs into why this shift is happening. And what she found was more personal than political, an identity crisis born from the pursuit of the American dream and this deep desire to belong, even if that’s at the expense of your own community.”—NPR’s Code Switch“It’s hard to fathom how any vulnerable group, be they Latinos, Black, or even white women, can consistently vote for conservative candidates who are hostile to their interests, and their humanity. In Defectors, Paola Ramos seeks to understand ultra conservative Latinos, and instead of lecturing them, explains how they’ve come to support violent authoritarianism.” —Elie Mystal, New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me to Retort“With both humanizing compassion and sharp urgency, Defectors highlights the voices and ideologies behind our current political moment. Paola deftly shows how historical trauma and cultural values have caused a rightward shift among an increasingly politically active population and reveals why America’s Latino voices will matter in this election more than ever, and in every election to come.”—Ana Navarro, Emmy award-winning cohost of “The View”

Paola Ramos is an author and Emmy-Award winning journalist. She is a contributor for Telemundo News and MSNBC. Ramos is a former correspondent for Vice News. Prior to her career in journalism, Ramos was the Deputy Director of Hispanic Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a political appointee during the Obama administration, and she served in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

She is also a former Hauser Leader in the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, where she received her master’s in public policy, and she recently joined the board of trustees of her alma mater, Barnard College. She is the author of Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity. Ramos was born in Miami to Cuban and Mexican parents, grew up in Madrid, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.