PBS special ‘American Historia’ dives into the untold history of Latinos

‘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.’

By Kristen CabreraOctober 11, 2024 12:06 pm, , ,

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.

I’m sure you discovered the unexpected along the way. Do you recall a specific story that surprised you?

Well, I thought it was incredible, actually, one of Texas’s own was a woman named Emma Tenayuca in the 1920s and the 30s, who became a labor organizer. You know, this was a young lady at the age of 19 years old who was fighting against a conglomerate of pecan shellers in San Antonio. By the time she had already started the organization, there were thousands of people who were following this woman.

And it was just something that, again, you just start realizing, I never heard of Emma Tenayuca. I thought we came pretty late in the game in terms of labor organizing. Of course, you know, we know about the stories of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta during the stripes for farmworkers.

But, you know, now there’s this woman Emma Tenayuca almost 100 years ago that that was doing incredible work, and it’s just not being recognized. That was just like one of a thousand stories, to be honest.

One of the other stories that I loved was of the Young Lords, which was a young Latino group in New York City, in Chicago that were protesting against hospital inequities in the Bronx and in Spanish Harlem and in New York City.

And they ended up protesting; they took over a hospital. And before you know it, they helped create the Patient’s Bill of Rights, which is found in every single hospital around the country. And that to me is just mind-blowing.

The second episode takes a close look at a monument with a shadowed legacy for many Tejanos. I’m talking about the Alamo. Can you talk about the importance of this story?

Yes. Well, when you hear the story about the Alamo, to be honest, even with historians, it can be a little confusing – which side were we on and where were the Mexicans and where were the Latinos and which side were we fighting for?

But ultimately, what I found out and what we discovered in our research is that Mexicans started fighting against the Texas Republic at the time because Mexico was basically against slavery. So well before the Civil War, a lot of the history of Mexico was of being a free society.

You think of the Alamo and you think of the heroes on both sides and you kind of forget, what were they fighting for? And what it was is that Texas wanted to be its own republic. And Mexico obviously had been there first, but they didn’t want slaves. So it was just pretty eye-opening, understanding what the facts were behind the actual event.

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You talked with so many different people throughout this series. What perspectives did you want to make sure were involved in telling these stories?

Our main mission was to tell the stories of Latinos from the point of view of Latinos and the people that were there versus the history that we’re taught, which is obviously from the the point of view of the conquistadors and the people who won – you know, as they say, the history is written by the victors.

So I just thought it was important for us, and I know John is super passionate about this incredible mission that he’s on. It’s about just recognizing the facts, whether they’re good or bad, but just recognizing the realities that Latinos have been here all along.

And in many ways, you know, people don’t even realize like Spanish was the first language spoken here that was non-native in the entire United States. Even Thomas Jefferson said, the future of our country should require you to participate and learn Spanish because you’re going to need it in the future of the country, because right now it’s in Spanish.

Well, from a creative perspective, weaving this incredibly detailed history together into three hourlong episodes, it sounds daunting. What techniques did you lean on to help this storytelling process?

Well, John had been doing his Broadway show, Latin History for Morons, at the time when we kind of came upon the idea of doing this as a TV series. So John had been on this quest for many, many years preparing his show.

So he came in with a wonderful 25-page outline that really listed a lot of the stories going back thousands of years, all the way to contemporary history. So that that was kind of our foundation.

And then once we got into the research and the production of it, we had several historical advisers, people that are really well known, like David Carrasco, a professor from Harvard University, Professor José Moya from Columbia University, and Maria Elena Fernandez. So they helped guide us in terms of making sure the facts were right. But it was daunting, now that you mention it that way, I’m like whoa.

It’s a lot of history to go back and tell from another perspective.

Yeah, it was a lot, very ambitious. I don’t think we knew what we were getting into completely until we were, you know, in the edit room, trying to cut down 120 interviews into three hours.

This is a three-part series. The final part airs today. Could you give us a preview?

Yes, this is the 20th century episode. So we talk about things like I mentioned, Emma Tenayuca, and we talk about some of the painful things as well, like about the braceros program where millions of immigrants were brought in to do jobs that maybe Americans at the time didn’t want to do, and then they were unfortunately deported.

It’s kind of a stain on American history that over a million Mexican Americans were deported. People who were citizens were literally taken out of the country. And so we talk about that.

But we also talk about some of the incredible heroes from military history, like the story of Guy Gabaldon, who was a kid from East L.A. who grew up in a kind of a Japanese neighborhood. So he learned a little bit of Japanese – like what we would call kitchen Spanish, whatever the Japanese version of that is.

And while he was in World War II in the South Pacific, he used that alone to help 1,200+ Japanese soldiers surrender. And I just was like, wow, this story is incredible. We need to tell this story among many, many other heroes.

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