Democrats Worry as New Spanish-Language Conservative Network Launches; “They’re Scared. And They Should Be”

Tuesday morning, a first-of-its-kind Latino conservative network launched. The network, called Americano, aims to provide Latinos with right-leaning Spanish-speaking radio talk shows.

The network will be launched out of Miami. Twenty-nine commentators and about 10 reporters will provide news and information to Spanish-speaking individuals on Sirius XM channel 153.

The CEO and founder, Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, stated in an interview that “They’re scared. And they should be.” He continued “Democrats took Hispanics for granted for too long, and no one thought to create a home for us in conservative media. There is an appetite for this. You see it on social media. You see it in elections.”

Hidalgo seeks to capture the untapped market of Latino conservatives. Hidalgo noticed that the Latino community needed its own Rush Limbaugh in order to fight against the incessant left-leaning biases displayed on Spanish media.

Michael Caputo, Americano’s chief strategy officer and former Trump campaign White House adviser, states that he is “doing this because it’s going to be a profitable business.”

“Hispanics are moving toward us,” and continued “they’re jumping into the Republican pond. And we’re giving them a lily pad to land on. Some will land on the Donald Trump Pad. Some on Reagan. Some are for Jeb Bush.”

Many Democrats have begun speculating that Americano will rely on spreading misinformation in order to capture the Latino community. Albeit, misinformation has become synonymous with essentially any speech Democrats do not like.

According to NBC, Garcia “bristled at the notion that the privately funded network is going to purvey disinformation or misinformation, and accused Democrats of trying to cancel speech they don’t like.”

Garcia and his business partners appear to be capitalizing on positive trends for the broader conservative movement.

In 2016 only 35% of Latino voters in Florida cast their vote for Donald Trump. In contrast, 46% cast their vote for Donald Trump in 2020.

Similar trends are becoming more pronounced in heavily Latino counties in South Texas. Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas showed that Donald Trump’s vote share increased from 29% in 2016 to 42% in 2020. A massive 13 point increase from the historically Democrat counties.

Zapata county has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate for decades and in 2020, it flipped red for Donald Trump.

Joe Gutierrez, a rancher and oilfield construction company owner in Zapata County, told NPR, “I think people are trying to wake the country up as to, you know what? Democrats don’t own us. You know, like, Joe Biden said,’ if you vote for Trump, you’re not Black.’ You know, you cannot put people in that situation. We’re not owned by nobody – no party.”

The sentiment expressed by Gutierrez shows that the Democrats may, in fact, be losing their hold over the Latino vote because of the Democrat’s belief that they own the vote.

Although Americano likely launches too late to have a noticeable effect on the 2022 midterm elections, there is potential for the network to have nationwide implications if it is successful. While attempting to capitalize on the Latino voting shift, the network may end up strengthening the shift – producing a symbiotic relationship between Latino voters, Republicans, and the network.

Should the network succeed in capturing a large Latino audience in the coming years, the Democrats will get in even hotter water as their long reliable voting demographic rejects their cheap attempts to secure their vote.