Chapter 8 summarizes the book as a whole and discusses theoretical implications. I briefly review the argument and the evidence provided to substantiate its claims. I then assess the implications of these findings for the comparative study of ethnoracial and identity politics and the interdisciplinary study of race in Brazil and Latin America. For comparative political scientists studying ethnic and identity politics, I emphasize how my argument highlights an alternative role for the state in these processes: as a set of actors responsible for shaping citizenship rights and subjective experiences, which in turn shape the subjectivities and identities that citizens bring into the political arena. For interdisciplinary scholars interested in Brazil and Latin America, I emphasize the dynamic nature of the state of racial politics in Brazil, and suggest that future studies move beyond the well-trod characterization of the Brazilian case as the go-to example of the absence of racial politics. I conclude the book with discussion of the challenges ahead for Brazil's racialized democracy.

This chapter opens by exploring how Trump’s self-aggrandizing political masculinization is connected to his racism. As Trump elaborates his identity as a White supremacist strongman, he implies that only he can emasculate brown maculinities through the tools of White ethnonationalism. Trump has also praised and admired despots across the world, preferring the trappings of cold-blooded brutality to the trope of the White civilizer. The chapter goes on to discuss how Latin American leaders have responded discursively to President Trump, as each adopts a particular stance to respond to his supremacist strongman masculinity. The stances of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, for instance, precipitated anxiety about Trump’s political humiliation of Mexico and his gendered humiliation of Peña Nieto. The current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has opted for a dignified posture, rebuking Trump while championing the revalorization of indigenity, rurality, and the Mexican common folk. Meanwhile, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of Brazil, plainly admires and vociferously parrots Trump’s white ethnonationalism, echoing almost word for word the text of Trump’s campaign speeches. These Latin American leaders thus by turns vilify and emulate Trump’s posturing, whether to counter, contain, or amplify the unpredictable power of the elephantine neighbor to the North.