I bet this was some sort of gen AI mishap: "translate this campaign text to Latin", because of course Latinos speak Latin, and it's called Latin America too!
Although this would be twice as hilarious if they hired a translator who just went "🤷 ah well, money is money"
I don't know Latin and haven't taken Spanish for like 20 years, but would the first line translate to "Legal (my emphasis) Hispanics and Latinos"? Gotta love courting the votes of a demographic while still showing your bias against them.
I know maga is dumb and all but I gotta imagine this is fake. No way they would actually know latin. That would only happen if they went to church as much as they pretend they do.
The astroturfing is obscene on several levels of ignorance and artificiality, fake as the sincerity on a Nestlé ad, only more ignorant. "We don't and won't listen to a single Latino among us".
And still, I hear of Latinos gravitating towards this shit. It's like they've normalized living under bigoted oppression in places like Texas or Arizona, and/or fall for the "family values" catholic bias.
Or they come at it from some other batshit insane angle, referring to the orange plague of 2016-20 - "Funcionó! It worked!" and refusing to elaborate further, as if the case was obvious in some way that's utterly incomprehensible to me.
Very telling that they didn't have a single Latino person involved in this that could have told them this is wrong. And even if you don't speak Spanish, this would feel off to anybody with any sort of exposure to Latin American culture.
Honestly it's completely readable as someone who can understand Spanish, but it feels otherworldly for some reason, like I'm reading a quite not right version of Spanish, like reading Afrikaans to a Dutch speaker.
I'm not American, but I'm really surprised that some Americans don't know anything about Spanish. I mean, there are a lot of places in the U.S. with Spanish names, and it's easy to encounter Hispanic/Mexican culture if you live in places like L.A.
Now I'm picturing a racist candidate from another part of the world trying to appeal to the white minority via Anglo Saxon language and imagery billboards 😄🤦
As a Brazilian, I kinda see what's going on: "Você consegue me entender?", to which it's often replied "Sorry, I don't speak Spanish". Portuguese is not Spanish, galera!