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Chalk it up to a kind of cynical Latina wariness, but I never felt convinced that Hillary Clinton would win the general election. Yet as reports poured in about the historic number of Latinos lining up to vote early in Miami, I felt 100 percent certain that the state would remain blue. After all, Cuban-American members of Congress like Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen had refused to endorse Trump. In October, following the “Access Hollywood” scandal, Ros-Lehtinen called on Trump to withdraw from the campaign. When Hillary Clinton appeared at a Miami concert with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, a stadium-size crowd showed up.

So when Florida turned red, I was stunned — especially after I saw the demographic breakdowns. Nearly one in three Latino voters in Florida cast their ballots for Trump. According to a CNN and Latino Decisions exit poll, his support among Cuban-American voters was even higher: 54 percent. “Definitely there was a hidden, secret Latino vote,” Jorge Ramos, the Univision news anchor, told me. “We’re seeing a new divide within the Hispanic community. The wall that Trump was talking about is clearly apparent now within the Hispanic community.”

This pro-Trump vote didn’t feel quite as secret to Roberto Rodríguez Tejera. Every day, he told me, people called into to his South Florida Spanish-language talk-radio show, “Contacto Directo,” to express their support for Trump. Rural white voters, he explained, aren’t the only ones frightened by the specter of feminism, Muslim immigrants and L.G.B.T. rights. “For many Hispanic Americans, the cultural changes of the past 15 years have been very hard. Trump, for many, is a return to the mother’s womb.”

While a clear majority of the state’s Latinos cast their votes for Clinton, plenty of others responded to Trump’s hostility toward undocumented immigrants. Every day “Contacto Directo” got versions of the same complaints from listeners: I waited so many years to be allowed to enter the United States; why should others get amnesty? I finally have my work permit; I don’t want an undocumented person to take my job for less money. “Maybe they’re even from the same country,” Rodríguez Tejera notes. Nationally, Pew Research Center reports that roughly a quarter of Hispanics favor building that big, beautiful wall.