By Tatiana Prophet

When Luis Pozzolo was 6 years old, his father, a Uruguayan senator, fled the country after a military coup d’etat that suspended the constitution and installed the military to rule from 1973 to 1985. Upon his return, the elder Luis Pozzolo was imprisoned for speaking out against the regime.

On Tuesday, the younger Luis Pozzolo, an American citizen since 2012, won the Republican primary in Arizona’s main border district, stretching from Yuma to Nogales. Now called District 7, the border area that comprises a lot of it has been a Democrat stronghold since at least 1960. Even in 1984, when Ronald Reagan swept most of the nation, the Arizona border area was the only district that went to a Democrat — and heavily, with Mo Udall winning 87 percent of the vote.