Name: Disinformation targets Latino voters in South Florida
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Disinformation targets Latino voters in South Florida

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At 10 p.m. one day in October, the raspy, high pitched voice of Cuban radio journalist Maria Laria welcomed a woman she identified as an elections official to her popular late night radio show. “Absentee voting ...” began Beatriz Perez, Laria’s guest. "What you’re doing is throwing your ballot into a tomb. What assurance do you have that your ballot is getting counted? There is so much, .” Advertisement Whether that speaker was an actual elections worker is open to question. A spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade elections department said they have no record of a “Beatriz Perez” among their permanent employees. The spokeswoman dismissed suggestions of fraud in mail voting. The elections office has a system that allows voters to track their ballot and make sure it is counted, the spokeswoman said. Studies have routinely shown that is exceedingly rare. Advertisement The incorrect information about Florida’s elections might have been part of what experts, politicians and national security officials call a major spike in election-related conspiracy theories and disinformation targeting South Florida’s Latino community, a key voting demographic in a major battleground state. In some cases, the disinformation has managed to make it off the internet and onto more mainstream Spanish language media outlets, allowing it to reach a greater swath of Florida’s 2.4 million registered Latino voters, who make up about 17% of all registered voters in the state, according to the Pew Research Center. “Generally speaking, these kinds of barbarisms are said constantly,” said Roberto R. Tejera, a journalist and host of a show on 1040 AM Actualidad Radio. “It’s sort of the daily bread of Spanish radio.” Tejera has devoted a daily segment to combating them. Though 330,000 more Latinos are registered as Democrats than Republicans in Florida, 843,000 Latinos are registered without any party affiliation — meaning their and more open to the influence of increasingly far-reaching disinformation operations. “There is definitely a campaign being aimed at influencing Latino voters here.” said congresswoman Debbie Murcarsel-Powell, a Democrat from Miami-Dade County who has called on the FBI to look into the phenomenon. “I have friends that are in intelligence and find a high amount of disinformation ads from places like Russia and China that just stir the pot and make Americans fight more," said Ana Paulina Luna, a Mexican-American Republican running to unseat former Florida Gov. Charlie Christ as a member of the U.S. House from Pinellas County. Eduardo Gamarra, a professor of political science at Florida International University, said, “The problem in the U.S is that we have these conspiracy theories that came out of areas like QAnon then got picked up by talk radio, then by Fox News and the like, and then get translated into Spanish." QAnon is a that alleges a cabal of Satanic pedophiles is running a global child sex trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump. Though wildly popular, the allegations have no proven basis in reality. “In just thee years QAnon went from three posts on a fringe website to something being discussed by congressional candidates,” said Cindy Otis, a former intelligence analyst and the author of True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News, who spoke during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Friday on misinformation and conspiracy theories online. Eric Vergara, a recent guest on Laria’s show, identified himself last Friday evening as a former intelligence official and then accused the Democratic Party of being “a cabal of pedophiles involved in child sex trafficking." Laria did not challenge his assertion, though she did contest his later claim that California had just passed a law allowing pedophilia. Vergara did not respond to requests for comment. Jorge Rodriguez, station manager at WWFE La Poderosa 670 AM, where Laria works as a journalist-host, declined several requests to make Laria available for an interview or to provide the contact information for Perez, the alleged election official. Advertisement After being informed of the election confusion on Laria’s show, Rodriguez said he would listen to the show and “talk to her, if I have to." Hard data on the volume or nature of the disinformation targeting South Florida’s Latinos is difficult to come by. So are insights as to who, if anyone, may be coordinating any disinformation campaigns. Even as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube banned thousands of QAnon accounts over the past month, according to the Associated Press, the conspiracy theory appears to be growing in popularity across Latin America, experts warn. And t — translated into Spanish — can be felt in South Florida. The multiple social platforms of a shadowy bitcoin peddling conspiracy theorist known as “Zamna The Oracle” offer a glimpse into QAnon’s Latin American success. “He’s among one of the most prominent Spanish language QAnon YouTube channels that I know of,” said Jaime Longoria, an investigative researcher at First Draft who focuses on Latino communities in the United States. Zamna, whose identity is unknown, has a Youtube channelwith over 16.3 million views and more than 181,000 subscribers where they regularly post videos with titles like “The Beast Is wounded and the final battle nears" and “Is Bill Gates the Antichrist? You’ll be shocked.” Twice-weekly A lunch-hour look at what's trending in Florida politics. You are now following this newsletter. At the end of his videos, Zamna regularly invites viewers to take his bitcoin investment class. The charge for attendance is $22. Though Zamna’s identity is unclear, his political leanings are not. “He runs this Latinos for Trump page,” Longoria said. Zamna The Oracle did not respond to requests for comments via email. Miami-Dade resident Aliesky Rodriguez, whose Youtube channel has almost 37,000 followers, is a homegrown talent. His channel features videos of him attending South Florida Trump rallies, as well as videos accusing key members of the Democratic Party of participating in the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory and others claiming that Adrenocrhome, a naturally occurring chemical in the human body resulting from the oxidation of adrenaline, is really the fountain of youth. Advertisement Rodriguez, 42, said he was a ballet professor in Cuba who now works as an AC technician. He notes that, while he doesn’t follow “Q” — the shadowy figure thought to at the center of the QAnon conspiracy — he does believe there is a group of intelligence officials secretly guiding Trump. Advertisement “I’m just a person on Youtube that tries to get the information out there, simply," he said. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement

At 10 p.m. one day in October, the raspy, high pitched voice of Cuban radio journalist Maria Laria welcomed a woman she identified as an elections official to her popular late night radio show. “Absentee voting ...” began Beatriz Perez, Laria’s guest. "What you’re doing is throwing your ballot into a tomb. What assurance do you have that your ballot is getting counted? There is so much, .” Advertisement Whether that speaker was an actual elections worker is open to question. A spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade elections department said they have no record of a “Beatriz Perez” among their...

Disinformation targets Latino voters in South Florida

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