‘No somos ninguna basura’: Philly-area Puerto Ricans react to ‘racist’ joke at Trump rally

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For Priscilla Fuentes, a Puerto Rican Philadelphian, the comments by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at former President Donald Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden were “vile,” “stomach churning” and “a bit frightening.”

“I believe, oftentimes, people say things in jest, and they uncover their true beliefs,” she said. “And I think that that’s what was happening there.”

After Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage,” the backlash was swift  from the country’s second-largest bloc of Latino voters, and a key voting group in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The comments came just hours after Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris unveiled her plan for Puerto Rico in an online video. Puerto Rican celebrities, including Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Antony, Ricky Martin and Lin Manuel-Miranda, showed their support for Harris and shared her video on their social media feeds.

Charito Morales, a community organizer with the grassroots organization Philly Boricuas, said the comments were “racist” and “disrespectful,” but not a surprise.

“This behavior, it has been seen before by the previous former president of the United States, 45,” she said. “The way that he mistreated us during Hurricane Maria, and all his campaign, and while he was in power.”

Egahiz Vazquez, who is from Ponce, Puerto Rico, and has lived in Philadelphia for 42 years, said the comments were “not a joke.”

“No somos ninguna basura,” Vazquez, a member of Make the Road Action in PA, said. “We’re not garbage.”

Morales said she and other Puerto Rican community members met with former President Barack Obama and music star Bruce Springsteen ahead of Monday’s rally in Philadelphia. They talked about the goals for the Puerto Rican community.

“They actually spoke on behalf of the Puerto Rican and to the Latino communities and making sure they don’t get discouraged and actually use that against them and go out and vote,” Morales said.

For David Torres, a former GOP ward leader in Philadelphia, who now identifies himself as an independent, the comment was “very stupid.” He said Trump and his campaign should have immediately disavowed the comments onstage that night.

Torres, a Trump supporter, said the comments aren’t a “dealbreaker” for him because he believes in Trump’s other policies, and because a senior  campaign advisor said “the joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

“I think that he should separate himself or be straight with the community,” Torres said of Trump. “He’s got a lot of good stuff. I believe in him more than I believe in [Kamala]. I believe that there’s a lot of things that she has at fault that I don’t like, but at the same time, you got to take responsibility.”

He wanted Trump to apologize to the community at his Tuesday night rally in Allentown — a city where Puerto Ricans make up roughly 9% of the population.

Trump did not apologize for Hinchcliffe’s comment at the event. Instead he claimed he has “done more for Puerto Rico than any president by far.”

“I’m so proud we’re getting support from Latinos like never before,” Trump said.

Fuentes said she knows some people who “are sticking to their guns and basically saying that it doesn’t matter … that they would vote for Trump, that it doesn’t matter, that it was a joke.”

But Morales, Vazquez and other Puerto Ricans in Philly working to support Harris said among many undecided Puerto Ricans they know, the comments have tipped the scales.

“A lot of people was not going out to vote,” Morales said, adding that now, it’s a different story. She said her phone has been ringing off the hook.

“We have all these people, they now make up their mind, they have [had] enough, and now they are going out, and they actually went out yesterday and they actually voted,” she said. “They went out and they did the early voting because they knew today was the last day, and it is the last day for early voting. They went out and they said, ‘Well, we are helping Puerto Rico people, and we are helping the Latinos. And we came and we cast our vote because we’re taking the trash [out] now, we’re not waiting for Nov. 5.’”

Vazquez said she hopes that more Puerto Ricans are now motivated to vote, especially in Pennsylvania, where they number in the hundreds of thousands — significantly more than Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in the state of roughly 80,000 votes.

“Yo espero que … eso les dé más énfasis para salir a votar, que no se queden callados, que no se queden en su casa, que salgan a votar para demostrarles que sí nosotros somos importantes, que valimos”, dijo ella.

“I hope that … that gives them more emphasis to go out and vote, to not stay silent, to not stay in their house, that they go out to vote to show them that we are important, that we matter,” she said.

Philadelphia City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents the Latino-majority 7th District, said she thinks there will be an impact among Puerto Rican voters in Philadelphia who “have to feel connected, respected and valued by the candidate in order for them to consider giving them their vote.”

“I believe that with the amount of anger that Puerto Ricans are feeling right now, I think it will make those undecided voters give their votes to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” she said.

The council member noted that it’s important for Puerto Rican voters to turn out to cast their ballots not just to show Trump “who we are as a community,” but to show everyone that “the Puerto Rican vote, the Latino vote, is a vote that has a lot of power.”

Morales said Puerto Rican organizers are pushing for the next president to pay more attention to issues affecting the island — including the fiscal control board, the failing power grid, education, health and more — and issues important to Puerto Ricans in the diaspora.

“We have to make sure to let them know, ‘Hey, we are Americans, U.S. citizens,’” she said. “We don’t want to keep being treated as a second-class U.S. citizen.”