The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Link

May 30, 2026

When Erin Brockovich recently observed on MSNBC that "people aren't being heard" in the rush to build AI data centers across the United States, she identified a problem that extends far beyond environmental regulation. 

Her concern goes to the heart of democracy itself: Who gets to decide how land, water, energy, and public resources are used in the name of technological progress? And whose voices matter when those decisions are made? 

For Texans, these questions are becoming increasingly urgent as the state emerges as one of the nation's leading centers of AI infrastructure development (MSNBC, 2026).

According to Brockovich's AI Data Center Reporting Project, Texas hosts approximately 464 data centers that are either completed or in process, making it one of the nation's leading hubs for AI infrastructure (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; also see UT News, 2026). 

Link [pdf]

At the same time, Texas reportedly leads the nation in citizen complaints submitted through her website concerning the impacts of data centers on local communities. Residents have raised concerns about water consumption, strain on electrical grids, noise pollution, environmental degradation, tax incentives, and the lack of transparency surrounding proposed developments (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; Gillette, 2026).

The map created by Erin Brockovich. 

brockovichdatacenter.com

To understand why these concerns are resonating so deeply, Karen Hao's recent book, Empire of AI (2025), offers an invaluable framework. Her reporting from Chile is particularly illuminating. There, communities challenged proposed hyperscale data centers that would consume substantial quantities of water in regions already suffering from prolonged drought. Residents found themselves confronting not merely technical questions but political ones.

Similar to Texas and other states where such centers are getting developed, top-down decisions affecting local resources, drinking water quality, loss of land and so on were often justified through narratives of modernization, innovation, and economic necessity, while those most directly affected struggled to gain meaningful influence over the process (Hao, 2025).
Hao challenges the popular image of artificial intelligence as a largely immaterial force existing somewhere in "the cloud." In reality, AI depends upon vast material infrastructures—data centers, electrical grids, water systems, mining operations, and labor networks that stretch across the globe. Every single AI request relies on physical resources that must be extracted, transported, consumed, and maintained.

What is perhaps most striking is that opposition to these projects is increasingly bipartisan. As highlighted in recent MSNBC coverage, residents from across the political spectrum are questioning whether communities are being asked to absorb disproportionate environmental and economic costs in exchange for promises of innovation and economic growth (MSNBC, 2026). 
In a political era defined by polarization, this convergence is noteworthy. As concerns over water scarcity, infrastructure demands, and local control intensify, the politics of AI infrastructure could become an important issue in future elections.

Recent research from the University of Texas at Austin projects that data centers could account for between 3 and 9 percent of Texas's total water consumption by 2040 (UT News, 2026). In a state already grappling with recurring drought, aquifer depletion, and increasing competition for water resources, these projections warrant careful public scrutiny. This is especially true in Central Texas, where population growth, climate uncertainty, and development pressures are already placing extraordinary demands on finite water supplies.

Yet environmental concerns alone do not fully capture what is at stake.

What Hao's work helps us see is that AI infrastructure may represent a contemporary expression of what Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000) termed the coloniality of power. Coloniality refers to the persistence of colonial forms of domination long after formal colonial rule has ended. It shapes whose knowledge counts, whose labor is valued, whose resources are extracted, and whose interests prevail in decisions about development.

Wikipedia Link

Historically, empires extracted silver from Latin America, rubber from the Amazon, cotton from the American South, and oil from colonized territories throughout the world. Today, the resources being extracted may appear different. Yet the underlying logic remains recognizable. The AI economy depends upon water, energy, land, public subsidies, data, and labor. The benefits frequently accrue to distant investors and technology firms, while local communities are often left to absorb environmental risks and infrastructure burdens.

This does not mean that artificial intelligence itself is inherently harmful. Nor does it mean that technological innovation should be rejected. The issue is not whether AI should exist. The issue is whether communities have a meaningful voice in determining how AI infrastructure is developed and governed.

This is where the concept of transformational resistance becomes especially useful.

In their seminal work, Solórzano and Delgado Bernal (2001) distinguish "transformational resistance" from other forms of opposition by emphasizing its critical awareness of structural inequality and its commitment to social justice. Transformational resistance is not simply reactive. It combines critique with collective action aimed at creating more equitable social arrangements.

More recently, Valenzuela, Unda, and Mena Bernal (2025) have extended this framework in their analysis of resistance to Texas Senate Bill 17 and the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education. We maintain that transformational resistance emerges when communities move beyond defending existing institutions toward imagining and constructing alternative democratic futures grounded in solidarity, collective agency, and the protection of the public good.

Viewed through this lens, communities raising questions about AI infrastructure are not merely opposing particular projects. They are advancing alternative visions of development rooted in democratic participation, ecological responsibility, and collective well-being. Their efforts remind us that technological progress should not be measured solely by computational power, market valuation, or economic growth, but also by whether it strengthens our capacity to care for one another and for the shared resources upon which our futures depend (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Valenzuela et al., 2025).

At stake is more than water consumption or energy demand. The deeper question concerns our collective obligations to resources that sustain community life across generations. Aquifers, watersheds, electrical grids, and public infrastructure are not merely inputs into an economic system. They are foundations of collective life. 

When decisions regarding their use are driven primarily by private interests while risks are borne by the broader public, citizens are right to ask whether the burdens and benefits of development are being distributed fairly.

This is why Brockovich's reporting initiative is so important. Her project does more than catalog complaints. It creates a public record of community concerns. It validates local knowledge. It elevates voices that might otherwise remain invisible within highly technical regulatory processes. In so doing, it helps democratize a conversation that too often unfolds behind closed doors.

The lesson emerging from both Chile and Texas is that technological futures are not inevitable. They are political choices.

The question before us is not whether artificial intelligence will shape the future. It already is. The question is whether that future will be organized around principles of extraction or stewardship, concentration of power or democratic participation, private gain or public responsibility.

We should be stunned—not because artificial intelligence exists, but because one of the most resource-intensive technological transformations in modern history is unfolding with so little public awareness and deliberation.

From Chile to Central Texas, communities are challenging the assumption that technological development should proceed without democratic consent. As Erin Brockovich reminds us, people deserve to be heard. 

The growing resistance to unaccountable AI infrastructure reflects a broader demand for transparency, stewardship, and meaningful public participation in decisions that affect collective well-being. At its core, the debate over AI data centers is not simply about technology. It is about who gets to decide, whose voices matter, and whether the future will be imposed upon communities or built with them.

The future of AI should not be determined solely by corporations, investors, engineers, or policymakers. It must also be shaped by the communities whose lives, resources, and futures are implicated in its development.

References

Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting. (2026). AI data centers & our communities. https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com

Bureau of Economic Geology. (2025). Water requirements for data centers in Texas [White paper]. The University of Texas at Austin. 

Gillette, S. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich launches map to track controversial AI data centers, which reportedly cost $25B in environmental damages last year. People. https://people.com/erin-brockovich-launches-map-track-ai-data-centers-11985676

Hao, K. (2025). Empire of AI. Penguin Random House.

MSNBC. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich on AI data centers: "People aren't being heard" [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hQLn5MbsEI

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906

Solórzano, D. G., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36(3), 308–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085901363002

UT News (2026, May 6). Data centers are growing in Texas, but big questions remain about water use. University of Texas at Austin News. https://news.utexas.edu/2026/05/06/data-centers-are-growing-in-texas-but-big-questions-remain-about-water-use/

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Mena Bernal, J. J. (2025). Disrupting colonial logics: Transformational resistance against SB 17 and the dismantling of DEI in Texas higher education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf

However you feel about Biden, read here Why Trump CANNOT Win the Presidency—READ "Project 2025," a "Blueprint for a soft coup": Inside the far-right plan that could grant unchecked power to Trump [Video & Transcript]

Friends,

WE CANNOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, LET TRUMP WIN. We must get the word out on this extremist "planned coup" laid out in Project 2025 in anticipation of a Trump presidency. 

It's being spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation and their large network of neoliberal and authoritarian populist supporters. It is over 900 pages long. Just keyword-search the words "abolish" and "eliminate" to get a sense of just how scorched earth their agenda is.

Do watch the whole video with Velshi on MSNBC (posted below). 

For ease, here is a partial transcript of Velshi's opening comments so that you can get a quick sense of the aims of this far-right leadership and their dystopian vision for the future of our country that we must vigorously oppose.

-Angela Valenzuela

TRANSCRIPT

Project 2025 ‘Blueprint for a soft coup’: Inside the far-right plan that could grant unchecked power to Trump

Velshi: If you have you been keeping up with our show, you're likely familiar with the radical plan of the far right to overhaul our government within the first 180 days of a new Republican administration, the plan known formally as Project 2025. It's spearheaded by the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. 

The plan is more than 900 pages long and it's filled with far-right policy ideas for dozens of federal agencies. Project 2025's advisory board consists of nearly 100 groups representing various far-right interests, including Trump loyalists, anti-abortion activists, Christian nationalists, opponents of LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-environmentalists. 

The threat that Project 2025 poses to our democracy cannot be overstated.

At the top of the list or plans to consolidate presidential authority, fill the ranks of the Executive Branch with loyalists, dismantle civil rights, and weaken federal agencies that are responsible for a wide array of social services spanning from poverty and education to healthcare and environmental protection. 

It also advances a Christian nationalist agenda, aiming to replace secular education with a Christian curriculum by redirecting funding from the Department of Education which it refers to as a "woke education cartel"—those are their words—and redirecting the money to charter and private schools.

Probably the most troubling aspect of Project 2025 is its plan to grant Donald Trump unchecked power over the Executive Branch, potentially allowing him to weaponized it against his critics, including, including those in the media who he constantly says he's going to target anyway.

Project 2025 is ultimately a blueprint for a soft coup, one that replaces our age-old system of checks and balances with cronyism. What Trump couldn't achieve in his first term, Project 2025 seeks to facilitate by removing obstacles to his authority. This includes an active plan for purging the Executive Branch of any dissent by replacing longtime civil servants with those who pledge fealty to Trump.

The group's database of potential political appointees includes more than 4,000 vetted candidates who are, according to the document, ready and willing to begin "dismantling the administrative state from day one."

In an interview with the New York Times, Trump advisor Russell Vought put it plainly. "What we're trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them."

Doesn't stop there by the way, Project 2025 calls for invoking the insurrection act which would allow presidents to deploy the country's military forces against American citizens who protest their actions, something that is illegal at the moment. 

Additionally, it claims to reverse recent LGBTQ+ civil rights protections, including same-sex marriage. It criminalizes transgender identity, equating it with "pornography." It would designate librarians who promote banned books as "sex offenders." 

It would define life as the beginning—life as beginning at the very moment of conception for the purposes of legal protection. 

These are just some of the things that the religious right plans to implement under Project 2025. And if this alarms you, it should. 

The greatest danger lies in underestimating and dismissing the gravity of this plan, especially because it's already underway. 

Just in March, tucked within a larger spending bill, Congress quietly approved a Project 2025 proposal to ban the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag from flying over U.S. embassies across the globe. 

As abortion, rights advocate, Jillian Kane aptly warns, "There's a line in Tolstoy's War and Peace that's useful for the moment we're in, "Nothing was prepared for the war that everyone expected."

Woe to us if the case of a Catholic-run charter school reaches the Supreme Court by Katherine Stewart | MSNBC

Woe to us indeed should this Catholic-run charter school out of Oklahoma make it to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). It's sickening to think that a SCOTUS decision in this case could very well institute, in effect, "Catholic Sharia Law" by allowing our public tax dollars to flow into Catholic-run charters and other religious schools where, of course, religious doctrine would get taught. 

As covered by Stewart herein, of great importance is a loss of rights for employees, including teachers and administrators, as well as students in such schools would experience—including First Amendment rights and the right of due process. This is because religious schools "are exempt from laws that protect students and employees alike from broad categories of discrimination." The "ministerial exception" option available to religious institutions is an open door to discrimination, leaving victims defenseless.

This does not at all represent societal progress, but is rather a step backwards should the highest court rule on this. Thanks to Dr. Tony Baez for sharing. We are duly warned. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Woe to us if the case of a Catholic-run charter school reaches the Supreme Court

Though transparently unconstitutional, an Oklahoma school board's decision may still be blessed by the radical conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pastoral Center Offices for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City last year.Google Maps

June 7, 2023, 6:01 PM CDT

By Katherine Stewart, author of "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism"

Since the 19th century, when the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations asked for a share of tax money to fund their own sectarian religious schools, it has been a matter of settled constitutional law that commingling public education and sectarian religion is impermissible. That is why what happened Monday in Oklahoma is so disturbing and significant. Over the objections of the state’s attorney general, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application from the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma for a publicly funded charter school.

The board put the archdiocese on the path to provide a Christian education paid for by the state. Though transparently unconstitutional, this arrangement may still be blessed by the radical conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, which has issued a series a rulings in recent years that use a specious idea of religious freedom to promote the establishment of religion.

For example, after the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, Notre Dame Law School hosted a conference in Rome at which Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito framed “religious liberty” as deference to those with certain religious viewpoints. The principle may sound equitable, but in practice it is a lightly disguised means of privileging conservative Christians.

Consider, too, that in December, former Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor said recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way for public funding for schools that promote religious doctrines and are under sectarian control.  

It’s not just the U.S. Constitution that should have stopped the board from approving the application to create St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School. Oklahoma law specifically prohibits charter schools from being sectarian. “The approval of any publicly funded religious school is contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interest of taxpayers,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said after the board voted. “It’s extremely disappointing that board members violated their oath in order to fund religious schools with our tax dollars. In doing so, these members have exposed themselves and the state to potential legal action that could be costly.”

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement: “It’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than the state establishing the nation’s first religious public charter school. This is a sea change for American democracy.”

In testimony to the state's virtual charter school board in February, Ken Upton, an attorney for Americans United, cited “teaching religion, sponsoring prayer, discriminating based on religion, or otherwise promoting religion or coercing students to take part in religious activities” in saying, “St. Isidore makes clear in its application that it intends to do all these things.”

The archdiocese has on its side some powerful allies from the same conservative legal movement that helped secure a majority on the Supreme Court, including the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic at Notre Dame Law School. Formed in 2020, the clinic has deep ties to the Federalist Society and the ultraconservative members of the Supreme Court. The clinic’s director, Stephanie Barclay, clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch and litigated cases for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. An associate dean, Nicole Stelle Garnett, clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and has written approvingly of the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Carson v. Makin, which expanded taxpayer funding for religious schools in Maine, and for which the clinic submitted an amicus brief.

Given the record of the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority in cases involving so-called religious freedom, supporters of St. Isidore have good reason to believe that majority will say St. Isidore can use public money to support its sectarian program — clearing the way for a future in which large amounts of money flow from local, state and federal treasuries into religious networks with clear political agendas and significant influence over public education.

As bad as such a Supreme Court ruling would be, perhaps even worse would be a decision that says such schools could discriminate against anybody or any group that offends their religious sensibilities. But this is precisely what the groups behind the Oklahoma religious charter school are teeing up in Colorado. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Faith Bible Chapel International in a case arguing for a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws at religious schools. 

In that case, Greg Tucker, a white man who served for 14 years as a teacher and the director of student life at the private religious school, adopted a Black daughter, after which some students started to refer to his family using racial slurs. After he tried to establish a symposium for students to address racism, he was fired. Tucker maintains that the firing was blatantly retaliatory and discriminatory.

The school is claiming a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination law. Such exceptions are intended to allow religious employers to avoid liability when they fire “ministers” and clergy. Although Tucker was not a “minister,” but rather a teacher, with no responsibility for theological instruction or significant religious functions as part of his job, the school is trying to use “ministerial exception” as a trump card against his claim that it practiced racial discrimination. A divided 2-1 panel at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the church, which has appealed to the Supreme Court. 

Given the tolerance for discrimination in the name of religion that the Supreme Court has demonstrated in cases such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., which let certain companies deny birth control coverage to their employees, and in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which says fired clergy cannot sue for discrimination, and given the court's eagerness to support the public funding of religious schools it has demonstrated in Carson v. Makin, it is reasonable to fear two things: that this court will decide not only that tax dollars can be used to fund religious schools but also that religious schools are exempt from laws that protect students and employees alike from broad categories of discrimination.

If the Faith Bible Chapel International and St. Isidore cases are heard before this Supreme Court, it seems likely that public education in the U.S. is about to change for the worse in the same way the Dobbs ruling changed women’s health care for the worse.

Make no mistake: America’s Christian right is taking direct aim at secular public education, but let’s not forget that it is also after the money. The U.S. spends over $700 billion on public K-12 schools every year. If conservative Christian leaders can lay claim to part of that sum, it could help sustain conservative churches, whose attendance rates are reportedly falling.

Religious right leaders have long claimed that they are the true victims of religious persecution in the U.S. They have not disguised their aim of using public resources, including government facilities and taxpayer money, to impose their values on other people, including other people’s children. Now that they have the Supreme Court they want, their goal may be within reach.

Katherine Stewart

Katherine Stewart is the author of "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" (Bloomsbury). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic.

Watch Alex Wagner Tonight Highlights: Jan. 25 on DeSantis' banning of AP African American Studies

Beginning at 1:38 on the meter of this youtube video, MSNBC host Alex Wagner addresses Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' book banning, policing curriculum, morphed into his banning of AP African American Studies. 

Listen to civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and Frederick Ingram, Secretary Treasure of the American Federation of Teachers, speak powerfully against this. Note that DeSantis' decision fell flagrantly on the the eve of Black History Month that begins tomorrow on February 1st and on the heels of the commemoration of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. 

So incredibly offensive and enraging. According to Ingram, these actions have led to many Florida teachers leaving the classroom as a consequence. How can teachers not be discouraged when they fear teaching the truths of history like slavery, reconstruction, civil rights history, and the like—all that "dangerous knowledge" about which we know well.

We have our own fish to fry here in Texas. Everyone should reach out to whoever represents them and express support for Rep. Christina Morales' House Bill 45 that will create a pathway to high school graduation that includes African American Studies, Mexican American Studies, and Ethnic Studies, generally.

Go to this link to find out who represents you here in Texas if you don't already know. This is winnable, but we need everybody involved.

-Angela Valenzuela

Trump Didn’t Win the Latino Vote in Texas. He Won the Tejano Vote.

Great piece here that provides perspective on the "Tejano" —i.e., Texas Mexican—vote in Texas, particularly for counties located along the Rio Grande border with Mexico. What additionally merits mention is that unlike the democratic party, the republican-led, Libre Initiative, that offered services to the Tejano community was an important factor that undergirded their endorsement of the Trump administration.  

As you can read from the article below, it will also be very important for the Biden-Harris administration to incorporate the economic needs of South Texas as we move, as we must, with reducing our carbon footprint. 

And not viewing or treating all Latinas/os as a monolith as elaborated herein, is essential.  Moreover, as covered by Tiffany Cross on MSNBC, white female voter turnout desperately needs to be put in perspective.  

To wit, white women overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump and how this is an electoral pattern that is not only many decades-old, but also more consequential to the turnout than the so-called "Latino-male vote," with white women actively maintaining, through their vote, our white supremacist status quo. An important exception is with white, college-educated females.

Much to chew on here.

-Angela Valenzuela

Trump Didn’t Win the Latino Vote in Texas. He Won the Tejano Vote.

Understanding the difference will be key to Democrats moving past their faltering, one-size-fits-all approach to Hispanics.

Jack Herrera is an independent immigration reporter, an Ida B. Wells Fellow with Type Investigations and an elections correspondent at Prism. Follow him @jackherrerx.

Photos by Tamir Kalifa for Politico Magazine

ZAPATA, Texas — Of all the results from the November 3 election, few drew as much attention from national political observers as what happened in a quiet county on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Zapata County’s vote in a hundred years. But it wasn’t its turn from a deep-blue history that seemed to be the source of such fascination but rather that, according to the census, more than 94 percent of Zapata’s population is Hispanic or Latino.

Zapata (population less than 15,000) was the only county in South Texas that flipped red, but it was by no means an anomaly: To the north, in more than 95-percent Hispanic Webb County, Republicans doubled their turnout. To the south, Starr County, which is more than 96-percent Hispanic, experienced the single biggest tilt right of any place in the country; Republicans gained by 55 percentage points compared with 2016. The results across a region that most politicos ignored in their preelection forecasts ended up helping to dash any hopes Democrats had of taking Texas.

To many outsiders, these results were confounding: How could Trump, one of the most virulently anti-immigrant leaders, make inroads with so many Latinos, and along the Mexican border no less?

An American flag and a Trump 2020 flag fly on private property in Zapata, Tex., on Nov. 11, 2020.

In Zapata, however, these questions have been met with mild chuckles to outright frustration. The shift, residents and scholars of the region say, shouldn’t be surprising if, instead of thinking in terms of ethnic identity, you consider the economic and cultural issues that are specific to the people who live there. Although the vast majority of people in these counties mark “Hispanic or Latino” on paper, very few long-term residents have ever used the word “Latino” to describe themselves. Ascribing Trump’s success in South Texas to his campaign winning more of “the Latino vote” makes the same mistake as the Democrats did in this election: Treating Latinos as a monolith.

Ross Barrera, a retired U.S. Army colonel and chair of the Starr County Republican Party, put it this way: “It’s the national media that uses ‘Latino.’ It bundles us up with Florida, Doral, Miami. But those places are different than South Texas, and South Texas is different than Los Angeles. Here, people don’t say we’re Mexican American. We say we’re Tejanos.”

Ross Barrera, photographed at his home in Rio Grande City, Tex., on Nov. 12, 2020.

Though not everyone in the Rio Grande Valley self-identifies as Tejano, the descriptor captures a distinct Latino community—culturally and politically—cultivated over centuries of both Mexican and Texan influences and geographic isolation. Nearly everyone speaks Spanish, but many regard themselves as red-blooded Americans above anything else. And exceedingly few identify as people of color. (Even while 94 percent of Zapata residents count their ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino on the census, 98 percent of the population marks their race as white.) Their Hispanicness is almost beside the point to their daily lives.

In the end, Trump’s success in peeling off Latino votes in South Texas had everything to do with not talking to them as Latinos. His campaign spoke to them as Tejanos, who may be traditionally Democratic but have a set of specific concerns—among them, the oil and gas industry, gun rights and even abortion—amenable to the Republican Party’s positions, and it resonated. To be sure, it didn’t work with all of Texas’ Latinos; Trump still lost that vote by more than double digits statewide, and Joe Biden won more of the nationwide Latino vote than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But Trump proved that seeing specific communities as persuadable voters and offering targeted messaging to match—fear of socialism in Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan and Cuban communities, for example—can be more effective than a blanket campaign that treats people as census categories. And in the end, it was enough to keep Florida and Texas in his column. If the Democratic Party’s 2020 postmortem for Texas—indeed, for the whole nation—goes only as far as to try to increase their appeal to “Latinos” as an undifferentiated bloc, they’re going to experience even harsher losses in the next election.

In the past two weeks, national newspapers have put forward more than one theory about why Zapata, and the surrounding counties, experienced a red tide. According to the New York Times, Zapata’s vote can be explained by the area’s dependence on the oil and gas industry—and it’s true, many natural gas workers worry about unemployment under a Biden administration. The Wall Street Journal summed up their own hypothesis in a word: the economy. Pre-pandemic, many in Zapata say they attributed job growth to Trump, and many remain wary of new economic shutdowns under a Democratic administration.

What this coverage makes less clear are the ways in which the modern Republican platform appeals holistically to many people in South Texas. Few Trump supporters in Zapata think of themselves as single-issue voters, and while Biden-Harris signs are as prevalent as Trump ones, the region’s culture is, in many ways, conservative—despite being one of the most reliably Democratic up to now.

The roots of the region’s blue history go back to when, in the first half of the 20th century, Democrats controlled political life in Texas. Historians say it’s hardly an exaggeration to say there were only two parties in the state: Democrats and conservative Democrats. Like much of the South, Democratic dominance began to change when the national party began to embrace racial integration, beginning with President Harry Truman’s desegregation of the military. However, the Democratic Party machine was powerful enough that Republicans were still fended off for decades.

Today, the Rio Grande Valley is many ways a legacy, a last holdout, of a once blue Texas. There of course have always been discrete political preferences that can explain why certain individuals vote Democratic. But there’s also just the basic fact that for generations most people have been born into Democratic homes and voted year after year in local elections where the only party on the ballot was the Democratic Party. Not to mention, 2020 is the first year Texas didn’t have one-punch voting, where you could walk into the polling booth and opt simply to vote the straight-party line. (Even some Democrats in South Texas have lamented the lack of political diversity. In 2006, Aaron Peña, the Democratic state representative for the district just to the south of Starr County wrote on a now-defunct blog about “the sad legacy of South Texas boss or strongman politics which relied heavily on patrón-managed turnout rather than the advocacy of ideas.” Peña, now working for the state land office, has since switched parties.)

Trump’s success in the Rio Grande Valley, says Daniel Arreola, a cultural geographer and author of Tejano South Texas, “peels back the onion on how really conservative that Tejano ranch and small-town rural population is.”

Scenes from South Texas: A very Catholic region, at top a student has graduation photos taken at the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in Rio Grande City. Border Patrol agents, of which many in this area are Hispanic, are seen (middle left) patrolling the Rio Grande River between Laredo, Tex., and Nuevo Laredo, Mex.

From the brush of Laredo across more than 200 miles to the lush delta of Brownsville, there’s a legacy of a frontier culture that lives on. A place like Zapata is oil country. On weekends, the town empties out as people head into the ranchland to hunt, and nearly everyone is proudly gun-toting and God-fearing. In the deeply Catholic county, support for abortion is practically nonexistent, while support for law enforcement, the military and even Border Patrol is rock-solid.

For Sergio Garcia-Rios, a professor of government and Latino studies at Cornell and the polling director for Univision, that people in the border region are more culturally conservative makes sense. “What bothers me,” he says, “is that people understand that about the white vote. Campaigns don’t have the same discourse in rural Pennsylvania as they do in Philadelphia.” He adds: “It’s a racialized oversimplification, one that holds that, if it’s Latinos, they should all look and act the same. … I think they hoped that Latinos would all be, you know, offended by Trump.”

In some ways, by pursuing the coveted “Latino vote” nationally, the Biden campaign created a massive blind spot for itself in South Texas, where criticizing Trump’s immigration regime and championing diversity just does not play well among a Hispanic population where many neither see themselves as immigrant or diverse.

Take Cynthia Villarreal, a lifelong Democrat and lifelong Zapata resident. She, like many along the Texas border, holds that her family history begins with the Spaniards’ colonial regime along the Rio Grande.

“We like to say here that we didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us,” Villarreal says, as she adjusts her face mask and slips in and out of English and Spanish. It’s a sentiment one hears frequently, from Republicans and Democrats, across the region. It’s also that very history that explains why Tejanos don’t fit easily into racial boxes.

“I’m too white to be Mexican, and I’m too Mexican to be white,” Villarreal says with a laugh. “No soy Mexicana, ni gringa. Soy Tejana.”

In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe ceded all Mexican land north of the Rio Grande to the U.S. As part of the conditions of surrender, Mexico extracted a guarantee from the U.S.: All Mexican nationals who remained on the land would be offered U.S. citizenship, with full civil rights. In the U.S., with Texas still a slave state, the second part of that agreement had a specific consequence: Mexicans would be considered white. If only it were that simple.

Tejanos were conscripted to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War but were also forced into racially segregated platoons in World War I and World War II. In 1930, “Mexican” appeared as a race option on the census. But by 1940, it was gone again. After a Supreme Court decision in 1935 ruled that three Mexican immigrants were not white, the Mexican government pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to remove “Mexican” from the census and again record all Mexican-descended people as white. In 2020, the census treats Hispanic as an option to select before asking one’s race, though election exit polls often don’t distinguish between white Latino voters and non-white Latino voters, instead drawing the demographic lines around non-Latino white voters versus Latino voters of all races. For Tejanos, especially older ones, all the labeling can be tiring.

“You young folks all want to call people Hispanic, Latino, white, brown, Black, green, whatever,” says Cynthia’s uncle Xavier. “When we were growing up, nobody was a Hispanic, Latino, Latina, brown, any of that. Everybody was an American. I’m still an American here.”

Arreola says that while the exact origin of the term Tejano dates back to before the U.S. conquered the area that was once called Tejas, the prevalence of Texan Mexican Americans using that identifier as a rejection of others being put on them—“I’m not Mexican, I’m Tejano”—began in the mid-20th century, as South Texans tried to distance themselves from more recent Mexican immigrants across the country as well as from Hispanic activists who were beginning to embrace Chicano identity. And there is certainly a coherent culture for it to describe: Tejanos have their own recognizable way of speaking Spanish and Spanglish (“me duele la head” or “pass me la escoba,” for example), their own cuisine (Tex-Mex is not simply Americanized Mexican food, as commonly misperceived) and their own regional music style (most popularized by Selena).

Even descendants of more recent Mexican immigrants who’ve assimilated into Tejano culture tend to mythologize a non-immigrant identity for themselves, Arreola says. In 19th- and 20th-century Texas, he explained, being called Mexican “had such a stain to it, and I think that the legacy of that is, in some ways, alive and well in the subconscious of some Tejanos in the [Rio Grande] Valley.”

“I see myself just as an American,” says Yvonne Trappe, another lifelong resident of Zapata but an ardent Trump supporter. “Growing up, I never knew that Hispanics were another race, that we were brown. Everybody just put white—not that it matters. Our culture is one thing, but we were just Americans.”

“Growing up, I never knew that Hispanics were another race, that we were brown.”

 Yvonne Trappe

Trappe says her grandparents were born in a small Mexican town south of the border but had deeds to land on the American side of the river, where her parents, she, her kids and her grandchildren all grew up. “The Mexican culture here is strong. My grandfather had a beautiful culture, and we were taught our culture—our first language, everyone’s first language, is Spanish.”

While many Trump supporters in South Texas, like Trappe, have Mexican roots and say they can understand how the president’s crude and derogatory language might seem divisive to some, few of them hear the president talking about them when he makes comments about Mexicans.

“I think when people say they don’t like Mexicans, to me it means a Mexican citizen, or a Mexican national, who has crossed illegally,” says Barrera, the Starr County Republicans chair. “And then again, not all Mexicans look alike. So when they say they don’t like Mexicans, I don’t think it means me. … It means a Mexican national who has broken the law.”

In Trappe’s view: “Today, the people coming over are not the kind of people who came before, like the braceros, who came to work, to educate their children, to better themselves. No, the people coming now are looking for handouts.”

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Whether Tejanos will continue to shift rightward depends on whom you ask. Cynthia Villarreal is confident Zapata will turn blue again. She supports Democrats because, among other reasons, she strongly believes they will be better for her and her family on the economy and help people who have fallen down get back on their feet with dignity. But in many ways, she’s not unlike her neighbors who voted for Trump. She’s pro-law enforcement (among her brothers and other men in her family, there have been an FBI agent, a CIA agent and multiple sheriffs); pro-Second Amendment (“My brothers and I are all dead shots; we could shoot by the time we were 8.”); and fiercely anti-abortion. Villarreal thinks that if Democrats had been better at reaching people in Zapata and South Texas, more would have come to share her view rather than one fed to them by the GOP. “Biden is not coming for your guns,” she says, “and he’s personally pro-life.”

Chuck Rocha, who managed the Bernie Sanders campaign’s Latino outreach earlier this year, thinks South Texans’ votes are winnable—because he won them. Sanders, who ran to Biden’s left, got the highest vote share in most counties in the Rio Grande Valley region in the primary election. Rocha says it was because his campaign talked to South Texans about their issues, not just their identities. And Tejanos proved far more receptive to a pitch about a rigged economic system and health care than to generic appeals to their Hispanic heritage.

Rocha believes that when it comes to campaigning for Latino votes, it’s all about knowing your audience. The Tejanos in the Rio Grande Valley “who wear a cowboy hat and belt buckle and drive their pickup trucks” aren’t the same as the “woke Latinos” in Dallas, he says.

A Zapata resident who fought in Vietnam waits with his granddaughter for the start of a Veterans Day parade on Nov. 11, 2020.

Democrats certainly feel passionate about winning back Zapata. After the national election was called for Biden, Villarreal organized an impromptu “Ridin’ for Biden” car rally. She says she expected about a dozen cars, but more than 80 showed up, by her count.

“People are still Democrats down here,” Villarreal believes. “Even if they voted for Trump.”

That may be true, at least on a technicality. In Zapata today, remarkably, there is no formal Republican Party. Everyone elected to city government is a Democrat. And even lifelong Republicans like Trappe say that, on paper, they’re registered as Democrats—so that they can vote in primaries, since there were no Republicans in town to vote for. But some younger Trump supporters think 2020 could, or at least should, be the beginning of a local political reckoning.

“Everything has been better under Trump,” says Leroy Cruz, while working at the car-detailing business he runs out of his garage. A Trump flag flies on a pole nearby.

Leroy Cruz (bottom) and his garage (top) decorated with Trump flags, in Zapata, Tex., on Nov. 11, 2020.

“The oilfield is back up. There are more jobs, more work than ever,” says Cruz. “And yeah, I like [Trump’s] attitude. I like the way he talks.”

Cruz says he feels that, in recent years, people have begun to shake off the cultural assumption that to live in Zapata means one must vote Democratic. “I think people are starting to wake up and realize that the Democrats aren’t good.”

There is no singular reason why Trump did so well in South Texas, but certainly key to the increase in Republican turnout was the GOP’s willingness to engage the border region as its own political environment, rather than just an extension of the so-called Latino community.

In the meantime, as “Trump Trains”—caravans of pickup trucks flying MAGA flags—drove through cities all along the Rio Grande, Republicans told oil and gas workers that a “Green New Deal” would destroy their livelihood, told hunters that Democrats wanted to take their guns, and said Democrats would allow late-term abortion. In the final debate, when Biden said he would like to see the country transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy over time, Trump asked, “Will you remember that, Texas?”

Eventually, Bruní said the state party sent her something to campaign with: blue posters, with the words “Todos con Biden.”