Misinformation flows in Spanish in Philly and throughout the U.S., some of it with ominous overtones

There’s a 24-year-old Venezuelan man living in Iceland who spreads political misinformation in Spanish to American Latinos on YouTube. He’s a viral smash.

On WhatsApp, a free international messaging and calling platform, misinformation about the presidential election accumulates in bunches.

In August, a group of Republican Cubans from Florida showed up in Fairhill, Philadelphia, to tell the more than 80% Latino community through phone calls, leaflets, and sidewalk confrontations, “The 2020 election was rigged, and if you’re a real Christian, you have to vote for Donald Trump.”

Latino voters in Pennsylvania could play a pivotal role in this election as both parties jockey for their support. It makes them a target for misinformation.

While political misinformation is vexing enough in English, those same lies and distortions can create another level of difficulty for people in the United States who speak Spanish.

One reason is that debunking falsehoods on social media, already hard to do in English, is nearly impossible in Spanish, because there are fewer Spanish-language moderators. When available, moderators try to maintain decency, remove harassing or bullying comments and, if possible, flag fake news.

Also, platforms like WhatsApp are encrypted, meaning messages are private, making it extremely difficult to moderate or fact-check what’s being disseminated, as Facebook tries to do for public posts.

Also, certain pieces of misinformation that Americans may have grown inured to can hit the ears of some Latinos very differently.

For example, at campaign rallies, it’s not unusual to hear former President Donald Trump say: “She [Vice President Kamala Harris] is really a Marxist. … This country is not ready for a Marxist or a communist.”

Such freighted labels, emblematic of the terror that caused immigrants to flee hostile leftist regimes in Central and South America, make Harris an unpalatable choice and Democrats seem like monsters, experts say.

“The emotions white Americans may feel hearing those words don’t come close to matching those of Latinos,” said Laura Zommer, CEO and cofounder of Factchequeado. a Spanish language fact-checking organization based in Argentina with ties to Philadelphia Latino media.

And, Zommer said, when some Latino immigrants or their children hear Trump’s lies about a stolen election in 2020, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched. “Venezuelan elections have been marked by fraud,” she said. “Some people are accustomed to non-transparent elections,” and may not bother to vote.

It’s not clear why Juan Torres, the Iceland fabulist, talks up Trump to Latinos in America. Around 40% of Latinos in the United States speak Spanish in their homes; there are 62.5 million Latinos living in the United States, 19% of the population.

Nour Saudi, a producer for Futuro, a nonprofit news organization, said in an interview that Torres has 170,000 subscribers on YouTube.

“His channel is called ‘Venezuela News,’ but it’s only about U.S. politics,” Saudi said. “He falsely tells his Latino audience that Kamala Harris wants to abolish ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], defund the police, and confiscate Americans’ guns. I don’t know what motivates him.”

Whatever the reason, such propaganda can be effective.

Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, a research hub operated by and for Latinos in the Western Hemisphere, conducted a poll of Latino adults in the United States in September to learn what kinds of misinformation is making its mark:

That misinformation is flourishing among the roughly 250,000 Latinos living in Philadelphia is no surprise to Olga Renteria, executive director of Philatinos Radio, based in South Philadelphia. The station is a partner of Factchequeado.

“For many of the Latinos we talk to in Philadelphia ... there’s no politics conversations in the home at any time, and we try explaining it to them, and to dissuade them from believing misinformation,” he said.

Many Philadelphia Latinos simply believe what they see and hear on WhatsApp, said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition.

The Pew Research Center has found that 54% of U.S. Hispanic adults are on the platform, which is favored by immigrants as well as any users with families living abroad because there are no subscription fees or charges for use.

(Hispanic refers to a person with ancestry from a country whose primary language is Spanish. Latino refers to a person with origins from anywhere in Latin America. The terms are often used interchangeably.)

“I’ve seen the political propaganda videos on WhatsApp,” she said. “There needs to be a better system of checks on what is being said in Spanish. If there are things Meta [WhatsApp’s owner] is doing to correct Spanish misinformation on WhatsApp, I’ve never been aware of it.”

Scripps News has reported that a Meta spokesperson said the company has incorporated new tools to help stop the spread of suspicious or false information, including labels and limits on forwarded messages, banning mass messaging, and providing more support for a large network of fact-checkers.

Not all misinformation is imparted online.

That’s a hard truth gleaned from the city’s streets, according to Charito Morales, a well-known Fairhill activist and nurse who has cofounded Philly Boricuas (Puerto Ricans), a grassroots group that supports Latinos and battles election misinformation.

When a group of Cuban Republicans traveled from Florida in the summer and began “proselytizing for Trump,” as she said, Fairhill residents were caught off guard.

“Oh, my God, they were everywhere,” Morales said. “Outside drug stores, supermarkets, churches, all telling us in Spanish to vote for Trump.”

Group members falsely told anyone who’d listen that Election Day is Nov. 6. They incorrectly asserted that first-time Pennsylvania voters don’t need ID to vote. They wildly claimed that Roe v. Wade was “never a real thing,” having been conjured by “demonic people” who want their daughters to have “abortion abominations,” Morales said.

“I had to get out some bullhorns and debunk their misinformation right there on the streets,” she added. “We didn’t chase them. But we did outargue them with bullet points, and they left.”