The new PBS special “American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos” explores what the legacies and foundations of Americans past truly hold for its Latino people.
The series, hosted by Hollywood icon John Leguizamo and directed by the award-winning Ben DeJesus, is the latest iteration of a story that continues to evolve as more folks from the Latin American diaspora move into positions within media and academia.
DeJesus joined Texas Standard with more on the inspiration behind the series and its impact.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Give us a quick pitch for the series, for those who haven’t had a chance to catch the first two episodes.
Ben DeJesus: “American Historia” is about the untold history of Latinos going back thousands of years. You know, we found that a lot of the history textbooks that are taught in America are missing a lot of the contributions that Latinos have made.
So we decided to go out and celebrate it and realize that Latinos have been here since the U.S. even existed. In fact, we were part of the fabric of this country and helped create it. So it just felt like it was time to celebrate it and recognize the contributions of our incredible community.
The first episode I know resonated with so many people because growing up, we get told who our heroes are in the history books. You mentioned that a little – is that how you felt?
Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s interesting because there’s been studies told recently by the Johns Hopkins University, which basically said that over 87% of the contributions of Latinos are left out of the textbooks. And unfortunately, it becomes a never-ending cycle of not being recognized and really the history being inaccurate.
And so more than anything, we just wanted to show the facts because, you know, the fact that we’re on PBS, there’s nothing in the show that we couldn’t put in there unless it was triple sourced and fact checked and all the good stuff.
And then we just started saying, wait a second, we need to correct the record. Because a lot of times a community gets looked at or judged by maybe contributions that they have or haven’t made. And we just said it’s time for us to really put some of these things into the record, because it’s a fact and it’s the truth.