The refugee populations from Cuban and Vietnam that settled in the United States exited emerging socialist states in their countries of origin, and many developed before or along that journey strong anti-socialist and anti-communist sentiments that were not unwelcome in a post-McCarthyism United States. Perhaps that is one contributing factor concerning the disproportionate numbers of these populations (in relation to other Hispanic or Asian voters) who vote for Republican political candidates. These two populations experienced distinct pressures for leaving home that are all caught up in imperial, international violences, not ones that can be only attributed to the workings of a formerly-colonized and neocolonized state with certain form of government. What may have been bad politics for them in the home country may also have been good politics in the United States of the 1960s and 1970s, but fifty years later, how do you create your own narratives of trauma when your politics are always bad?
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