Since his 1986 TV debut on Miami Vice, actor John Leguizamo has been a drag queen in 1995’s “To Wong Foo,” Tybalt in 1995’s “Romeo + Juliet,” Toulouse-Lautrec in 2001’s “Moulin Rouge!” Estragon in 2021’s “Waiting for Godot,” and voiced characters in animated features, including “Ice Age.”
During National Hispanic Heritage Month, the Colombia-born actor/writer/director/producer is bringing his “Brown and proud” sensibility to TV with a three-part PBS series, American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos, featuring historians, academics and activists providing commentary plus actors reading texts. I interviewed Leguizamo via Zoom in Washington, D.C., where he’s rehearsing his play “The Other Americans.”
What are the worst misconceptions of Latinos?
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Obviously, there’s the pervasive negative stereotyping, as Trump has said, and lots of Hollywood did us a disservice as well, portraying us as drug dealers, villains – not that there’s anything wrong with being a service worker, but we’re more than all that: Lawyers, doctors, presidential nominees and candidates, executives, we do lots more.
What are you telling us in "The Untold History of Latinos?"
The first episode shows the mighty empires thousands of years before the conquest, the Aztec, the Maya, the Inca, the Taíno. The second episode is from the conquest to the 1900s and all the things we did to build America. We contributed our inventions to the world, chewing gum, popcorn, peanut butter, galvanizing, rubber, the ball. The suspension bridge was an Inca invention and Incans had binary code before computers. We helped build infrastructure in America...
I’m telling you we Latinos have built America and don’t get credit because we’ve been otherized in this country since the beginning. The first European language spoken in America was not English, it was Spanish. We’ve been here since 1492 and before there were the empires. Ten thousand of us fought in the American Revolution, 20,000 in the Civil War, 120,000 in World War I; in World War II, 500,000. Over 60 Medal of Honor honorees.
Our contributions to the making of America are massive. That’s what this show is about: Putting those facts back into history. Johns Hopkins University did a study: 87% of Latino contributions are not in textbooks …
Traditionally, Columbus is considered a great hero, but what’s Historia’s take?
You can’t “discover” us; you didn’t “discover” us; we were here. Columbus did not discover America. There were a whole bunch of cultures and empires here – people were living here. We discovered Columbus – because he was lost.
Columbus was first contact. He brought 33 pandemics that decimated us and so much violence. He was like a Hitler to us Latinos. He forced men to work. Brutalized people, burned them alive, chopped their hands off if they weren’t bringing enough gold. If they tried running away, he’d cut feet, set dogs to eat children. He had a prostitution ring of nine-year-old girls. He was horrific …
How were the empires conquered/subjugated?
Obviously, there were the first contact diseases we didn’t have – syphilis, whooping cough, malaria. There were no roaches, rats, pigeons, all brought by conquistadors and Europeans. Then came violence, taking our gold. Five hundred thousand tons of our gold was taken from us and it helped build the great European empires. Our silver was double that … The conquest came here and destroyed these incredibly advanced civilizations … The Renaissance was built on our wealth...
In Part II Historia moves to the US. How did “Manifest Destiny” impact Latinos?
Mexico was almost from the Mississippi to the Pacific and then the US came up with a flimsy excuse to invade and take all that land. But most Latin people there remained. They had land, political wealth and all that was taken from them. They were lynched, burned alive, shot, segregated, redlined, experimented on. Women were sterilized in the early 1900s without their knowledge.
[An early] lynching in America was Antonio Gómez in 191[1] Texas; the first woman lynched in America was Josefa Segovia during the Gold Rush … We’ve been fighting to preserve ourselves in this country for 500 years.
What role did slavery play in White Texans’ war of “independence”?
Mexico was against slavery all along and Texas was part of Mexico. When Euro-Americans moved there they wanted to bring slavery; because it was Mexican territory, they started a revolution to free themselves, so they could have slavery.
What were the White Caps?
Vigilantes in California and the West trying to protect Latino farmers after the invasion of the US in the 1830s. They had been ranching there for centuries and the US wanted to put fences and borders. They’d cut fences because they believed the land belonged to everybody and cattle should roam free.
You claim two million Mexicans/Chicanos were deported after the 1929 stock market crash?
It was the Repatriation Act. President Herbert Hoover said Latinos were taking jobs, so they deported almost 2 million people. The only US citizens ever deported are Latinos.
Trump now has a plan to deport 20-ish million “illegal aliens.”
It’s horrific. Are you going to round us up and profile American citizens? It’s very dangerous, hostile and aggressive and will hurt millions of people. It’s a stupid idea, because immigrants fuel this economy. They do all the jobs nobody wants to do.
What were “Juan Crow Laws”?
All over the Southwest and West, Latinos were not allowed – we were segregated – to go to parks with Whites, theaters, churches, etc. [Down South] they had “Jim Crow” laws – for us, they had “Juan Crow” laws.
What was it like interviewing legendary Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers co-founder?
Meeting Dolores Huerta was incredible. She’s a force of nature, still going strong at 90, so positive, still fighting the good fight. Her whole thing is unity, that we’re better and stronger together.
What were the “Walkouts”?
Latinos in L.A. had fought against segregation and redlining. But their schools were still underfunded, teachers were making kids take trade classes and talking them out of professional careers because of racism. So, students, teachers and parents orchestrated these walkouts in the ’60s to fight against lack of funding, racist ideas, all over L.A. schools.
Who were the Brown Berets?
The Black Panthers borrowed Che Guevara’s black beret and we borrowed from the Panthers and turned the black berets into brown berets. These were young activists fighting segregation, racism, police brutality, all over California.
Tell us about the Young Lords?
The Chicago and New York version of the Panthers and Brown Berets. Intellectuals, young Puerto Ricans who basically created the medical Bill of Rights for Patients. There were no services above 96th street in [Manhattan], where Spanish Harlem was. They protested to get services.
What is Latinos’ role in the presidential race?
We’re the largest voting bloc after White people. We’re going to decide who the president is going to be.
“American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos” premiered Sept. 27, Oct. 4 and 11, on PBS, PBS.org and PBS app.
This is an edited version of an interview that appeared at Truthdig Sept. 26.
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. Rampell is the author of “Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States” and he co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book,” now in its third edition.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2024
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