The Puerto Rican voting bloc—close to 6 million strong across the U.S.—rose to national attention after last week’s racist comments by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at a Donald Trump campaign rally in New York City disparaged Puerto Rico, likening the territory to “a floating island of garbage.” 

For many, the lewd statement was a reminder of Trump’s xenophobic attitude and policy record, and Democrats hope the outrage will push voters to the polls, especially in swing states with Hispanic strongholds—chiefly Pennsylvania, home to Philadelphia with the second largest concentration of Puerto Ricans on the mainland. 

“People understand the context of when he did the joke, where he did the joke, who paid him to appear, and what campaign he was involved with,” said Michael Collazo, a member of Philly Boricuas, a collective of Puerto Ricans organizing the local diaspora. “I think it’s an example of people, regardless of what their opinions are and what their ideological philosophies are, knowing the one thing you do not mess with is us as a culture and our archipelago. You do not call it trash.”

The presidential race is expected to play out across seven battleground states, including Pennsylvania, where nearly 400,000 Puerto Ricans are eligible to vote. In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won the state by a narrow 1.2% margin, with just over 80,000 votes. 

“I think the Latino vote in Pennsylvania is going to make or break whoever wins the presidency here,” said Karen Rodriguez, the founder of The People for Puerto Rico, a Philadelphia-based advocacy group, and a staunch Kamala Harris supporter. “The Puerto Rican community across the state, beginning with Philadelphia, has been activated. They are very motivated at this point, and I think come election day, there are going to be a lot of surprises.”

Building on the momentum

On Saturday, The People for Puerto Rico partnered with other community organizations to mobilize hundreds of volunteers to get out the vote for Harris, targeting the Puerto Rican barrio spanning five Philadelphia wards. 

Rodriguez explained that the event was planned ahead of time, but her organization received an influx of interest from people wanting to help door-knock in the days following the New York Trump rally. 

“They feel that they need to show solidarity with Puerto Rico, with the Puerto Rican people who live in these wards, and to really get the vote out for Kamala Harris,” she said. 

According to local organizers, these high-concentration Latinx neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia have historically been excluded from voter outreach efforts. 

“The wards that are low income and densely populated with Puerto Ricans, traditionally, have not had voter participation,” Collazo said. “It tends to be guys who just got here from PR, that kind of demographic. They’re like, ‘Yo, I gotta hustle and make a living. I don’t got time.’”

Eneida Rivera, who is originally from Puerto Rico, lives in Philadelphia and works as a cleaner. She’s been a member of 32BJ, a union for property service workers, for 15 years. Through the union, Rivera got involved in political organizing. She’s been canvassing voters for Harris and door-knocking daily through a union program that subsidizes her salary while she’s on leave from work. On her visits, Rivera registered voters, ranging from newly turned 18-year-olds to formerly incarcerated people who didn’t realize they were eligible to vote. 

“It was very unique for us to go out there,” she said. “There are a lot of Latinos out here who didn’t even think about voting until we actually knocked on their doors.” 

Rivera said the video of Hinchcliffe infuriated her. 

“I had to go out there and spread the word even more and show them the video because some people didn’t even see it,” she said. “I just reminded people how Trump treated us when we had the Maria storm and that he didn’t care about anyone.” 

Trump was widely criticized during his presidency in 2017 for resisting aid payments to Puerto Rico following the destruction from Hurricanes Maria and Irma, as well as for throwing paper towels into the audience during a visit to the territory.  

A Tight Race

Trump took to the campaign stage for damage control last week in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a majority Hispanic city boasting about 34,000 Puerto Ricans, where the backlash has been strong. In a rare move, the Trump campaign distanced itself from Hinchcliffe, saying the comic’s remarks don’t reflect Trump’s views. 

Although Latinx and Hispanic voters have historically skewed Democrat, the 2020 presidential election saw an increased number supporting conservative candidates and causes, and research indicates that trend is likely to continue into this year’s election. 

In October, Boricua Vota, an internet campaign encouraging Puerto Ricans to vote, launched a video series specific to swing state voters. “Few people will change their mind if they were thinking about voting for Trump,” Boricua Vota founder Jimmy Torres speculated. “But people that weren’t interested in voting, now they’re motivated to come out.” 

Collazo points out that some Puerto Ricans are disillusioned with voting because they don’t feel that either party represents their interests. “(There’s) wide-scale frustration about what’s happening in PR, where the vast majority of people are unhappy with the economic reality of the island and the federal government’s reaction to the issues there,” he said. 

Hours ahead of election day, most polls showed that Trump and Harris were nearly tied to win Pennsylvania. 

Rodriguez said her group has been on the ground campaigning for Harris since September. Their focus was originally informing voters about the issues at stake, but at this point, “it’s really about making sure people know exactly where to go [to cast their vote].”