Nine Years of Tono Latino

Some of the best things in my life only exist because of a timeline I never wanted

Nine years ago today, I launched Tono Latino.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan or a brand or a strategy. I just saw something that needed to exist, and I went with it.

I’m sitting with a lot of feelings today. Pride? yes. Gratitude? absolutely. But also grief. And guilt. And something I still don’t quite have a word for.

So I’m going to try to explain it.

It started with a nightmare we couldn’t wake up from

The night Trump won in 2016, I woke up in the middle of the night convinced it had been a dream. A bad one.

Of course, it wasn’t.

The next day, the only thing that got me out of bed was a therapy appointment. After that, I got sick. My body was doing what my mind couldn’t: trying to process something that felt impossible.

Then came January 2017. People were organizing for the first Women’s March, and something shifted in me. I started paying attention to what was happening around me.

I went to the march. I saw signs. I saw new organizations forming. And I noticed that nobody was really talking to Latinos.

So I went looking for the people doing that work, but I couldn’t find them.

Then I found a statistic that broke my heart: Hispanic voter turnout had fallen below 50% in every presidential election since 1992, sitting at 47.6% in 2016.

That was the spark. When I worked at Intel as a computer engineer, I learned a company value called Assumed Responsibility: if you identify a problem, you own it until you can pass it to someone better suited. I looked around. I couldn’t find anyone doing what I thought needed to be done so I decided to do it myself.

What happened next

I’m not going to list everything I’ve built or done over these nine years. That’s not what this post is about.

What I will tell you is that this work gave me things I never could have planned.

It gave me friendships that feel like family. People I talk to every single day, who understand this work because they’re doing it too. People who have become some of the most important relationships in my life.

It gave me moments I will carry forever. Standing in the White House multiple times. Being invited to the Vice President’s residence as a recognized Latino leader.

And once, at the White House Christmas party in 2024, I bumped into Heather Cox Richardson, one of my absolute idols, and forgot my own name when trying to introduce myself.

It gave me access I never imagined. Private briefings and conversations with people like Senator Elizabeth Warren. Sitting down to interview my Congresswoman, and representatives like Teresa Leger Fernández and Janelle Bynum. Being trusted with information I could bring back to my audience.

It gave me the chance to build something entirely mine. Not a job someone hired me for. Something I created with my own hands, wearing every hat, figuring it out as I went: CEO, producer, writer, strategist, and even the person who fixes the tech issues at midnight.

It gave me purpose in a way that nothing else ever has. My eleven years as a computer engineer were good years. But this? This is completely different.

But none of this would’ve happened if Trump had lost in 2016.

I feel guilty saying that.

It feels wrong to say that something good came from something so harmful. It feels like a betrayal of everyone who has been hurt, and so many people have been hurt.

But here’s what I know to be true: I would give up every single one of those blessings in a heartbeat if it meant immigrants could leave their homes without fear. If it meant pregnant mothers weren’t dying after being denied care. If it meant children weren’t being separated from their parents. If it meant millions of people still had access to healthcare, to food assistance, to a basic sense of safety in the country they call home.

I’d give it all back. Every friendship, every White House visit, every moment that took my breath away.

In an instant.

That’s the thing about this timeline. It gave me work I love with my whole heart. And it did so much damage that no amount of blessings can balance the scale.

Both of those things are true, and I need to stop trying to resolve them.

What this is really about

2024 hit differently than 2016.

When Trump won again, I didn’t get sick. I didn’t even cry. I was catatonic. Paralyzed in a way that felt new and heavier, because I knew exactly what was coming.

But here’s what was also different: I wasn’t alone.

I had people. Real ones. People I’d met through this work, through marches and conferences and group chats and late-night conversations. People who called me. Who showed up. Who said, without needing to ask: I know. Me too. What do we do next?

That community didn’t exist for me before 2016.

And I think that’s true for a lot of us.

I’ve been thinking about everyone I know who found their people because of this fight.

The person who showed up to their first Indivisible meeting and is still there, now with friends they’d do anything for.

The person who started volunteering and discovered something in themselves they never knew was there.

The thousands of people who stood up for their neighbors when ICE set up operations in North Carolina. People who had never done anything like that before, and who now understand something profound about what it means to be part of a community.

These things happened because of a painful timeline. And they are real. And they matter.

So here’s what I want to leave you with today, on the ninth anniversary of something I built because I had no other choice:

What has this time given you that you wouldn’t have found any other way?

Sit with that. You don’t have to resolve it. I certainly haven’t.

But I think there’s something important in naming it.

Con cariño,

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Source: Hispanic voter turnout data from the Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplements, 1980–2016, via Latino USA.