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

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Most non-Latinos think Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day. It’s not. Cinco de Mayo celebrates the Mexican Army’s ass-kicking of the mighty French Army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862 when Emperor Maximilian tried to establish a monarchy in Mexico. No way, José or I should say, Pas question, Pierre.

Mexico bid adios to their Spanish colonial overlords on September 16, 1810. Six years earlier, Haiti, an island nation of black slaves, overthrew their French colonial overlords. What was historically significant in both those revolutions was they were both accomplished by people of color against white Europeans. They didn’t get as much coverage on the Nightly News as the American and French Revolutions. Wonder why?

The Mexican Revolution did catch the attention of the fledgling American nation because now their next-door neighbor was no longer governed by fellow traveler white Europeans, but by brown indigenous peasants and barefoot mestizos. So, like a good neighbor, they declared war on Mexico (Mexican-American War 1846 – 1848) and stole over half their territory. But the USA failed to heed the warning of Oscar Wilde: “When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

 The greedy gringos won the war, but we—the Mexicans, the Latinos, the Chicanos, the Mexican Americans and even the Pochos del Otro Lado—we who now dominate the Southwest, California and increasingly are influencing the rest of America and the world, we won the goddam narrative. Here’s how.

ALL HAIL THE UBIQUITOUS TACO
It’s been said the banana and the potato are the “perfect foods.” These are foods you can survive on without other foods. Well, I guess if you are a monkey or Irish that may be true. But consider the taco. The taco is a complete meal encased in corn, flour, wheat or a multi-grain tortilla. As a complete meal, the taco solves the mystery of chopsticks, exposes the knife and fork as unnecessary and renders the bologna sandwich obsolete. The taco can be enjoyed for breakfast, lunch or dinner. What a taco consists of is only limited by your imagination and what is in your fridge.

In any large American city, there are as many taco trucks on the streets as there are city buses. You can enjoy tacos in Paris, Texas and Paris, France. Legend has it some nice Mexican women made tacos for the defeated French soldiers after the Battle of Puebla. They washed them down with their stuck-up French wine rather than good, ice cold Mexican beer, but c’est la guerre.

YOU’RE IN AMERICA, VATO, SPEAK SPANISH!
Spanish was the first European language spoken in the New World, not English. In some parts of the Occupied Territories along the Tex-Mex border Spanish is the first language of choice. Check out the rosters of Major League Baseball teams and you will find more Spanish surnames than you would in a Havana phone book. 

Millions of people with Spanish surnames can be found in every stratum of America: food production and processing, textile sweatshops, the building trades, home and health care and the military. Maybe it’s time English-speaking America learned a little Spanish so they can communicate with those who feed, clothe, house, take care of and protect us.

LATINO HOLLYWOOD ON THE VERGE
Latinos make up a huge percentage of the film and TV viewing audience. But that number is not reflected in the representation of Latinos on the small and big screens. Unfortunately, too often the stories told are stereotypical depictions of gang bangers, drug cartels and other violent, mindless shoot ‘em ups. There are some bright spots to be sure. Cable TV shows like, One Day at a Time, Selena: The Series, Gentefied and recent theatrical offerings, Walking with Herb and In the Heights are just a few positive examples.

The problem is not a lack of talented Latinos in front and behind the camera. The problem is no Latinos heading up big studios that can greenlight more exemplary stories about our community. But this too shall come to pass.

THE TRANS-PACIFIC CHOLO EFFECT
The cholo tradition of East LA has crossed the Pacific to the Far East country of Japan. Today you can find young Japanese girls dressing and making up themselves like the cholas of Boyle Heights. On the streets of Tokyo, lowrider car clubs can be seen and heard bopping up and down the boulevards in a less than fast and furious fashion to the thumping beat of reggaeton.

DON’T LOOK NOW, AZTLÁN HAS ARRIVED

Do we Chicanos have the legal and primordial rights to the lands annexed by the United States resulting from the Mexican-/American War? I seriously doubt this current US Supreme Court would rule in our favor. But if you look at the undeniable influence through language, culture, cuisine and sheer demographics on those annexed territories and around the world the mythic dream of Aztlán has already been achieved. It’s a testament to the indomitable spirit of the Latino people and el grito heard around the world.

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