On Rancho Libertarianism

And whether this strain of Latino politics will go for Trump or Harris in 2024

My cinto piteado

PREFACE: About six years ago, I coined the term “rancho libertarianism” to denote a type of political ideology I saw in many of the Mexican Americans I knew — populist in the conservative sense yet not quite Republican, collectivist yet not quite wokoso, and ultimately up for grabs. The term has simultaneously intrigued and infuriated readers every time I’ve used it ever since. I’ve gotten regular requests from people to define it, and even offers to publish a manifesto on it in a wonky journal.

I was never able to fully explore the topic until now, because I, um, got busy — no, seriously.

Besides, I always wanted to manifesto out rancho libertarianism in the parameters of my newsletter, where I can speak at length and not be subject to newspaper or journal inches. My regular newsletter is Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly (por favor subscribe!) so why am I not publishing it over there?

Because I don’t want to inconvenience my regular followers with the following manifesto — not because of what I’m going to write about, but because of length. A newsletter should be short-ish — no more than 2,000 words. Substacks are about the length, the length!

Besides, Substack seems to be where the political heads go and share — and I want this one to shared and discussed.

So, here we go with “On Rancho Libertarianism”…

A Question

I like to answer questions.

I used to have a columna where the premise was people asking questions about Mexicans. I have a co-columna, “Ask a Californian,” for Alta Journal, where myself and my co-columnista Stacey Grenrock Woods, take on questions about the Golden State. I answer random questions every Tuesday night at 9:45PM PST on my Instagram page — but who knows how long THAT will last, since Zuck hates La Virgen de Guadalupe.

There also used to be a recurring feature on my free weekly newsletter, Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly, called “Grítale a Guti” where I would answer people’s questions about ANYTHING. I don’t do it anymore, because the questions dried up, but I had a blast with it.

I like to answer questions.

It was in my newsletter that I received the following letter, which was sent all the way back in 2018. After the letter is my response, which shall constitute my manifesto on rancho libertarianism. If you have thoughts, email me at mexicanwithglasses@gmail.com, and maybe I’ll publish the best thoughts in a subsequent canto (my parlance for “newsletter” for any new readers).

I hope the guy who asked this is still a subscriber of mine. I wish I kept his email. I do remember his last name — Ibarra. But NOT related to the Ibarra clan that rules Sur-Mex dining in the Raleigh-Durham area — I asked Charlie haha. This guy called himself Jose, but for some reason I don’t think that’s his actual name.

Mister Ibarra: If you’re still subscribing to me, hope you read this answer. Gracias for this one — one of the few in my career I couldn’t immediately answer.

But first, your question…

My apologies in advance. My question required details and I tried my best to keep it short.  It isn't.

I was born and raised in Boyle Heights, near Wabash Park.  I went to Evergreen Elementary, then Belvedere Jr.  High before we accidentally moved to North Carolina in 1993.  I was 13, my brothers were 11,10,1, and twins were baking in my mothers belly.      

In moving to a rural town in North Carolina, I learned about racism.  Although we had learned about it in Elementary school, I honestly never experienced it in Boyle Heights.  This could be attributed to my undeveloped teenager brain or our rarely leaving Boyle Heights and East LA.  Regardless, moving to NC was a complete culture shock. Rebel Flags, White Supremacy Posters, just plain ignorance, ignorance everywhere. It was still intriguing for some reason.  Part of us felt like the cool city kids in the middle of a bunch of ignorant rednecks.  

My first day of school in NC, a redneck asked me to get him a “fucking” chocolate milk.  I responded “what the fuck did you just say?”  For a second, I thought shit was going to go down, but instead, this redneck responded with “Oh shit, you speak English, I'm sorry.” We went on with our day, at this time, I didn't consider the ignorance that was instilled in so many people from the South. I am assuming the hate of any non-white people is in their DNA or it could be that they are still dealing with the reminisce of hookworm.  Either way, it was palpable.

We went on with our day.  I don't really know why, but after this incident, I decided to be friendly to these ignorant fucks.  I figured out ways to deflect the hate and change the subject or make a joke.  They had a hard time fighting it.  I even dated a Southern belle for a few weeks.  They actually started befriending me.  It was confusing, but I went with it.  I even adapted some of their style and started dumb trends.  Dumb shit, like wearing the trucker hats with fish hooks.  Prior, this was only a redneck thing.  By the end of High School, I had so many friends.  Some of these rednecks still try to keep in touch.  Hopefully I changed at least one life and ended the instilled hate for at least one person. 

Fast forward to college.  This of course was community college, by this time I was working and making “too much” money to receive financial aid.  My wife and I eloped and lo and behold she got pregnant.  I dropped my career in the food industry and slowly started a small tech company.  That's right, a Mexican with glasses, running tech company in the middle of a town that gets shocked when Mexicans speak english :) 

My first few meetings were a nightmare.  People were stuck on the fact that my name was Jose and I had the audacity to offer my web development and I.T. services. This people couldn't believe I spoke English, let alone, own a computer. For the first couple years, this was a struggle.  I had to undercut everyone and do a ton of free work.  I decided I would do better with a business partner.  A white guy of course.  He would take care of clients that felt “uncomfortable” with me.  Even though I was an owner, some clients would state they wanted to speak to my boss and accuse me of lying when I told them I was the owner.  My favorite compliment from one customer was he really hated Mexicans, but I was different and fun. Fuck that guy.

Over the years I have busted my ass.  I have an awesome family, home, and life is great.  I have also learned to take the high road.  Through all this hate and ignorance.  I have pushed through it and I moved on.  In high school, I adapted, I smiled, and nodded.  In business, I have taken the extra steps to always exceed expectations.

Growing up Boyle Heights, this wasn't me.  We not only trashed our neighborhood, we would trash those trying to better themselves.  If someone was working on becoming successful, we would see them as trying to be white. In our mind, white meant successful.  Brown Pride? Success meant moving up with a tagging crew, cholos, or getting a minimum wage job.  I don't remember many classmates having big dreams, I don't remember many opportunities,   It is as if a poverty box was built around us.   A trap of sorts, I escaped it, and I dealt with diversity. 

Part of me feels like those that are stuck in the poverty box, don't know it.  They aren't aware of  opportunities outside of the box.  In talking to some relatives, some don't want to listen to anyone who has “made it”.  If anything, there is a sense of abandonment.  The other part of me has to remember the powdered milk, the government cheese, my mother working 10 hours a day to barely make ends meet.   The random cundinas to make ends meet.

So my question to you is, am I insensitive when I tell people in the hood that they need to seek opportunities outside of the hood and just work harder?  What is your opinion on the poverty box? Am I also being insensitive by oversimplifying the difficult circumstances ?

I know things have likely changed since the 90s.  Thanks to Trump, the racism shines brighter now that there is platform.  In the last few years, I have learned about the Orange County racism thanks to you and Lalo.

I try and document my thoughts, but I feel like some of my opinions are insensitive.  I was lucky; without luck, I would not have the opportunities.  I also worked harder than any of my peers.  I am able to support my family and help my mother financially (she was a single mother through all this shit btw).  This is nothing compared to my mother's childhood.  She would pick through sewage to find pápalo to sell and buy corn to make tortillas in Hostotipaquillo, Jalisco.  

An Answer

If I were to have answered Don Ibarra immediately, this is what I would’ve said:

Are you insensitive by lecturing people about your success? Absolutely — after all, I’m assuming you’re still stuck in a rural town in North Carolina. Get back to me when you return to Boyle Heights and beat Kevin de León. Do I believe in a poverty box? No, because a box assumes you’re in a situation because of means beyond your control, and that’s impossible to get out of — and, as your example showed, all you have to do is try harder to get over barriers. Migrants can scale 30-foot Trump walls, after all.

Are you insensitive by “oversimplifying difficult circumstances”?

This is the part that got me stuck, because even though I didn’t care for homeboy’s smugness, I kept nodding my head at his question.

What he described was my family’s life. THIS is rancho libertarianism.

Toward a Definition of Rancho Libertarianism

Rancho libertarianism is a third way in Latino politics that both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris need to court if they want to win swing states in the American Southwest and even beyond — the swing voters of swing voters. The sentiment is most popular among a certain type of Mexican American voter — but that doesn’t mean these tendencies don’t exist among other Latinos as well. But since I know Mexican American rancho libertarians the best, I will define them through their prism.

The rancho libertarian has roots in rural northern and central Mexico — basically north of and including Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas, the states that historically has sent the most amount of Mexicans to the United States, and for the longest. These are the states where ranchero culture — the man on horseback, agrarian, with a code of honor and continued devotion to Catholicism even on a superficial level, land of stark beauty and the kind of place where cultural icons include scorpions (Durango), tubas (Sinaloa) and prickly pear cactus (Zacatecas) — reigns.

The rancho libertarian comes from — yep! — ranchos, small villages that were never bigger than a few thousand residents before migration hollowed them out. They come from poverty at some point in their family tree — parents, grandparents, further up — that stays with them forever in family lore. But it’s not the urban poverty of Dickens or the inner city; it’s poverty from the countryside. Almost everyone is poor yet almost everyone lifts themselves out of it, one way or another, and help their fellow paisas.

The way to make it, above all? The United States.

The rancho libertarian is above all, an immigrant or someone with familial connections within two generations. Those immigrants had to leave because they were not content with their lot in life. They left home sometimes to cities within Mexico, but the vast majority came to El Norte, most often settling in an enclave with people from their rancho. That just didn’t offer familiarity; that also offered a community upon which one could teach their children how to view and confront — and conquer — the world.

The rancho libertarian found a trade. Some went into construction. Others became restauranteurs. Janitorial. Landscaping. Factory work. A blue-collar profession above all, with some becoming owners but never forgetting how they started. They continue to value the sweat equity of the rancho, because they could never escape it because few ever got a formal education.

The rancho libertarian grew up in clans. Cousins upon primos hermanos upon tíos y tías and relatives who have no blood connection, connected to ranchos to municipios to states. Community and family and the maintenance and flourishing of both is imperative in the rancho libertarian world — a common refrain is estamos unidos. We’re united (easier to say than practice, but that’s something else: see the feuds below).

But everyone has to pull their own weight in the rancho libertarian world depending on their situation. Kids can be kids; elders deserve to be adored. But from 18 until retirement, better WERK.

Individualism is just as important as community, because one cannot exist without the other in the rancho libertarian world. This is where the libertarian aspect of rancho libertarianism comes up, and especially in the following:

• The rancho libertarians is successful, above all. They got their good jobs and bought their homes, whether undocumented or not. They bought into conspicuous consumption, whether flashy Stetsons or mamalonas (huge trucks) or refurbishing homes back in the rancho where they planned to retire but ended up using only a few times ever year. Or spending thousands of dollars — if not tens of thousands — on parties ranging from baptisms to quinceañeras to weddings to anniversary parties to rancho functions to funerals. Spending money is a sacrament, because money comes — because the rancho libertarian put themselves in a place where it comes.

• The rancho libertarian is not a whiner. They know the world is a fucked-up place — terribly so. The children of the rancho libertarian grew up with the lore of deprivation, of blood feuds and deshaires that last generations. But the rancho libertarian doesn’t complain — they do something about it.

• The rancho libertarian knows government is inherently corrupt but doesn’t buy Grover Norquist’s wish that it be shrunk to the point you can drown it in a bathtub. Government should help. Whether Mexico’s 3-por-1 and ejido programs and AMLO’s pension pa’ viejitos or Social Security/medical coverage in the U.S., the rancho libertarian doesn’t mind a governmental safety net and investments in infrastructure, because they believe government at least owes something for taking away all of their hard-earned money via taxes. This is the part that conservatives will never understand.

• But the rancho libertarian has no use for a government that tells them how to live — no thank you to mandates, to the banning of the combustible engine and chroming, to code enforcement officers or DEI managers. Let the rancho libertarian live, and get the hell out of the way. This is the part that liberals will never understand.

• The rancho libertarian despises homeless people with a particular furor. Disgraced L.A. councilmember Nury Martinez was wrong about basically everything, but when she said that her San Fernando Valley council district didn’t deserve homeless people because blue-collar Latino homeowners there had worked hard for their property, that was as rancho libertarian as L.A. politics had ever gotten. Where were Nury’s parents from? Zacatecas, of course. This is the part that bothers me the most about the rancho libertarian worldview, but it’s a thing.

• That’s why the rancho libertarian is pro-law enforcement? Defund the police? Worse than communism. That’s what makes rancho libertarians the modern-day Irish Americans (at what point does a tamborazo replace bagpipes during a LEO funeral?)

• The rancho libertarian is proud. They made it — the American Dream, so mythologized by the Right and so lambasted by the Left, became theirs. Those who can’t earn it are considered pathetic. Why couldn’t they make it? The rancho libertarian made it through rugged individualism and leaning on community when needed — the best of both worlds. They made it despite facing the racism that Jose Ibarra above mentioned. They made it, and they’re not ashamed of it, and why should they?

• Once again: Success, above all, defines the rancho libertarian. In their minds, they’re the MexiCANs. Those who aren’t at their level are the MexiCAN’TS. They consider themselves the living embodiment of Chris Rock’s immortal bit on the difference between Black people and [terrible slur for Black people that I’m not going to bowdlerize but sure as hell won’t write out], whether they’ve heard the act or not.

• Rancho libertarians could give a fuck about whiteness — shit, they HATE whiteness. The rancho libertarians view white Americans — gabachos, they call them instead of gringos — as whiny, entitled, drug-addicted ingrates who waste the advantage of their whiteness in the U.S.. That’s why JD Vance will never gain traction among rancho libertarians — he might’ve come from hillbilly stock like rancho libertarians, but now he’s a dilettante who sees himself above his Appalachia roots, a sin no rancho libertarian would ever dare commit. That’s what liberals and conservatives will never get.

• Besides, modern-day gabachos are fundamentally pessimistic, which rancho libertarians will never understand. Pessimism turns you into a dour loser, and who wants to live like that? That’s where rancho libertarians get turned off by both wokosos and alt-losers. Rancho libertarians don’t like doomsday talk. Instead, the rancho libertarian lives by the adage of the rancho libertarian national anthem, “Un Puño de Tierra”:

  Hay que darlo gusto al gusto

  La vida pronto se acaba

  Let’s give joy to joy. Life ends fast.

Will Rancho Libertarians Go for Trump or Harris?

I meant to originally write this essay in 2020, when the question of whether Latinos would swing further toward Donald Trump was dominating media and political circles.

We all know how THAT turned out.

Trump — the most anti-Mexican, crass, border wall-building president since James K. Polk — increased his share of the Latino vote from 28 percent of the electorate to 38 percent, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center study. Democratic pollsters and professional Latinos have long disputed such findings, insisting Latinos didn’t move toward Trump and won’t move toward him in this election. Yet the latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump is grabbing 42 percent of the Latino vote, a four-point gain since July. Not only is that a four-point gain, but Kamala Harris support among Latinos has dropped in those two polls from 57 percent to 51 percent.

Such polling has driven gaba liberals apoplectic, and reminds me why I generally don’t like gaba liberals. They accuse Latino voters of being — take your pick — stupid, ungrateful, misguided or just wannabe whites.

Please.

South American and Cuban support for Trump isn’t rancho libertarianism — that’s anti-Communism mixed with the perspective of refugee culture. Their votes explain part of the 2020 swing — but rancho libertarian voters were the main reason.

In 2024, the rancho libertarian voter is crucial to bother Trump and Harris — but especially Trump.

The rancho libertarian knows Trump is a racist asshole — but they don’t care. The rancho libertarian has no use for Trump’s whining, but loves his shit-talking against the Left, especially against anything that reeks of social justice. The rancho libertarian is used to the demagogues of Mexico, and has survived cholos in the U.S. and cartels back home, so they’re not afraid of a second Trump administration. Build the wall? Now that Central Americans and Venezuelans and Haitians are the new immigrant group to hate, the rancho libertarian doesn’t care. Surviving an assassination attempt? Straight outta a corrido — and who doesn’t love a good corrido?

The rancho libertarian has nothing against a Black woman running for president — hell, they just supported a Jewish woman to become president of Mexico (really, the Morena Party in Mexico is the Rancho Libertarian Party, except more to the left), and they came out for Obama back in the day. The addition of a big, older-looking gabacho in vice presidential nominee Tim Walz was a positive because Walz is not ashamed of his rural background and has the nice-guy quality of the gabacho coworker who befriended the rancho libertarian when they were new to the country.

But woe if the Dem ticket starts harping on issues like abortion access and Ukraine more than bettering the economy, which is what the rancho libertarian cares about above all in this election.

The true wild card, however, is the descendants of rancho libertarians, the ones born here but who grew up in the rancho world in the U.S. and visited the home rancho more often than not. It’s them who are swinging more to Trump in my experience than the parents themselves. They’re the ones angry about Latinx and trans anything and illegal immigration and inflation and higher taxes and everything that Trump and conservatives have tried to pin on the Biden-Harris administration. It’s them who are succeeding less than their parents’ generation, and can’t understand why and so want to blame liberalism (it’s because you’re becoming gabas by whining so much; shut up and WERK like your parents, malagradecidos)

If the GOP wants to get more rancho libertarian voters, they need to tamper down on the whining and stick to their bread-and-butter topics — even the xenophobia, since the rancho libertarian thinks Trump ain’t talking about them (sadly, the Prop. 187 effect is long gone, even in California). But Harris will not win this presidential election riding on the likes of Eva Longoria and George Lopez or even Dolores Huerta and other Mexican American politicians and personalities.

Her doubling down on freedom and optimism is a way forward. That’s the rancho libertarian way, above all.

Democratic strategists and professional Latinos will not agree with any of the above and insist that all Latino voters are more progressive than conservative. Republican strategists will say that Latinos are natural conservatives, just like Reagan once supposedly said.

They’re both wrong, of course. The party that realizes Latinos are both and neither — the one that gets more rancho libertarians into their fold — will emerge the winner in 2024. Right now, I see neither Harris or Trump truly capitalizing on this.

Who will?

How I Came to Define Rancho Libertarianism

I first thought of this philosophy while trying to define both my politics, and the politics of the people I know from my diaspora of zacatecanos.

In the mid-2000s, I had lunch with someone who wanted to politically transform Anaheim into SanTana — make it more progressive. I warned them it wasn’t going to be easy: SanTana’s Latino political scene had decades on Anaheim, for starters. More crucially, its Mexicans — from all over, of course, but especially from Mexico City, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz — came from states and cities with political revolution in their blood. Anaheim then and now remains a redoubt of people from Los Altos de Jalisco and Jerez, Zacatecas, rancho libertarian to the core, the type of people who brag about how their ancestors fought in the Cristero Revolt against the Mexican government.

I suggested to the person they meet people from Jalostotitlán and Arandas and especially El Cargadero, all places where many of its former residents and their kids work for the city and school districts, for a reality check. They obviously never did: The Anaheim City Council may be now majority Democratic and Latino, but it’s to the right side of moderate. Wokosos tried to recall Anaheim councilmember Natalie Rubalcava but failed badly, because the rancho libertarians who went to Anaheim High School with her came to save the day.

The insistent ignorance by Dems and progressives of issues like that Latinos can’t possibly ever consider going conservative is why Trump is where he’s at today with Latinos.

I didn’t have the term when I talked to the guy, but I knew what rancho libertarian politics encompasses even 15 years ago. It’s the world that I grew up in, and one I still mostly believe.

My political awakening was from the Left, but something about the whininess of some and blame on structural everything never sat well with me. Too many of them despised the United States and what it stood for. Too many made excuses for flojos. Too many ridiculed the idea of individualism. Too many were clueless about how people outside of academia, politics and organizing actually lived.

The Republican Party has never appealed to me because of its rank xenophobia and obsession with all things women’s bodies, queerness, and Christianity. The Green Party was way too gaba; libertarianism (as opposed to the Libertarian Party, long ruled by weirdos) is probably my core ideology…but I don’t worship free markets, money, or Ayn Rand (the rancho libertarian is working class in spirit, middle class in aspiration, and forever looks skeptically on the mega-rich).

(And really, I’m a Marxist of the Groucho variety)

At the end, my political ideology was and is based on the life of my parents, aunts and uncles. They Made It, so I Made It. We never got a break — and we never took a break. We never made excuses, and we did it as Mexicans in a country that despised us.

I don’t fully believe in such bootstrap tenets, but I respect the hell out of those who do. You hate on any part of that, you ain’t my political kind, regardless of party affiliation.

Maybe that’s what rancho libertarianism ultimately is: breaks. But not lucky ones. Don’t break, and break all obstacles ahead of you. But not just for you — and definitely not for the people who don’t believe in this philosophy, racists and flojos alike.

Selfish? Maybe. A method for success in the Estados Pudridos? Damn straight. Worked for my family — and here we are.

I’ll end with a quote that I used to have on my Facebook page. I say “used to” because I’ve taken down all the quotes I used to have on my Facebook page because Zuck is trash. I found it over a decade ago — probably 15 years at this point — but it was so brazen and rancho libertarian that I could never forget it, even if I didn’t agree with it:

“We never had civil rights in Mexico, so why do we need them now? Rights aren't as important as owning your own business, being your own boss. The only empowerment that's universal is economic empowerment.”

It came out in the Dallas Morning News in 1999. Who said it? A zacatecano — BRUH…

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and has lived multiple lives as a journalist. You can reach him at mexicanwithglasses@gmail.com. Better yet, subscribe to his weekly newsletter, Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly, by signing up right here.