His latest American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos Premieres Sept. 27 on PBS
Written by Julio Martinez
John Leguizamo was born in Bogotá, Colombia but raised in New York City. He has appeared in over 100 films, working as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer and producer. On stage, his one-person play, Latin History for Morons garnered him a Tony Award after 400+ performances, and he followed that up by his PBS special: Great Performances: The Road to Broadway. Now, working in tandem with acclaimed television director Ben DeJesus, they have co-created PBS’s VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos, hosted by Leguizamo and scheduled to debut September 27, 2024.
“This project was originally inspired by my stage play, which I created because I was horrified by the almost total absence of Latinos from my son’s American History books,” Leguizamo exclaimed during the recent Television Critics Association press tour.
Leguizamo’s one-man show highlighted the fact that Latinos didn’t just simply arrive here, they’ve been here since 1492. The first Euro language spoken in America was not English, it was Spanish, and the American land mass, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, was, in fact, Mexico until 1840.
“To label John as just the host of this show would be doing him a disservice,” deJesus adds. “John is the genesis of the whole thing.” Leguizamo laughs, “I’ve always been a history nerd, especially when it comes to Latin history. I’m like the Rain Man of Latin facts.”
So all this came to him easily because he’d been studying the subject for the last 20 years. Leguizamo doesn’t just narrate the documentary. He conducts one-on-one interviews. Instead of just telling this history, he talks to individuals who can help bring the narrative to life.
“You need witnesses and testimonies,” Leguizamo explains. “Most people are Latin history deniers in this country. You need evidence. We need to have verification to authenticate what we’re talking about.”
Leguizamo makes it clear that many deniers are entrenched in academia. When he was touring the country with Latin History for Dummies, he learned that U.S. Latino history was banned in Arizona for ten years. This is a state that has a population of 30 percent Latinos. In Texas, educators are allowed to teach Latino history only one day of the year, yet Latinos make up 40 percent of the population in Texas, and represent the majority.
“John Hopkins University did a study and found that 87 percent of Latino contributions to the making of America are not in history textbooks,” DeJesus adds. “So that’s erasure right there.”
DeJesus believes this special that he and Leguizamo have produced is one of the ways to combat all the deniers. Concluding that, “If we can get this to be a regular series, it can be brought right into the schools.”
When DeJesus was asked to describe a few of the stories that really struck him, they were war stories, particularly the ones from Army veteran Guy Gabaldon. He explains, “Guy Gabaldon’s was a guy from East L.A. who happened to grow up with Japanese neighbors, so he picked up some Japanese. Based on his ability to speak Japanese, he was able — in the middle of the night – to get 1300 Japanese soldiers to surrender.
As for Leguizamo, his happiest and most satisfying interview was easy. “Dolores Huerta. Oh, my God, she’s so lovely. It was such an honor to meet such a gracious, gentle, generous warrior. And her sense of inclusivity and embracing everybody, even though she’s a fighter, she’s still about nurturing. And that’s who I’d like to aspire to be.”
Leguizamo and DeJesus talked about future projects, particularly dramatic ones and if they thought their projects could have a home on PBS? “That would be up to the producers on PBS. It would be great to do it at PBS. There’s so many great stories to be told,” he said with a shrug and a smile.
Case in point, during their research, Leguizamo and DeJsus discovered Gil Bosques Saldivar to be be an important figure in one of many stories. In World War II, he was a Mexican ambassador who saved 40,000 Jews in Vichy, France. He hid them in two churches. That’s more than Oskar Schindler saved. Bosques then gave his refugees asylum in Mexico. “It’s an amazing story that needs to be told. It was pitched to the studios but was rejected,” DeJesus exclaimed.
“What is a Latino?” Leguizamo asks rhetorically. “For the most part, Latinos are of three ancestries — African, European Indigenous. We’re one of the few ethnic groups whose religion, culture, and language were completely destroyed, and yet here we still are, and thriving in America.”
In fact, according to the Latino Donor Collaborative, Latinos contribute $3.2 trillion to the GDP of the United States and as a group, Latinos have the buying power of $3.4 trillion in the U.S.
‘We’ve come from so much oppression, yet our superpower is tenacity. We just don’t accept no for an answer,” Leguizamo proclaims.
VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos
Director and Co-Creator: Ben DeJesus – Co-Creator: John Leguizamo
Documentary Series: 90 minutes