Andrea Flores | Los Angeles Times (TNS)
LOS ANGELES — John Leguizamo is tired of the omission of Latino stories in American history. And he is doing something about it … again.
The award-winning actor and producer is the host and force behind a new PBS series, “American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos,” premiering Sept. 27.
Directed by Ben DeJesus, the three-part show follows the “Freak” comedian as he explores threads of Latino American history often cut from textbooks.
With expert knowledge from historians, anthropologists, authors — and narrations from such actors as Benjamin Bratt, Rosario Dawson, Edward James Olmos and Rosie Perez — the series hopes to assert the long-standing existence of Latinos in the U.S. and their contributions.
“This has been a passion project of mine and my cultural contribution to American Latinos in America,” Leguizamo tells The Times.
The first episode, “Echoes of Empires,” highlights Indigenous communities pre-colonization.
“A lot of the history that we hear about it is told from the point of view of the colonizers,” DeJesus said. “It’s almost as if it’s assumed that until the Spanish arrived on the shores of the Caribbean, we didn’t exist.”
In one example, the series highlights the marvels of ancient Inca trepanation — a neurosurgical intervention where the skull was drilled to relieve head pressures — which had a survival rate of 80%, compared to 50% of cranial surgeries performed 400 years later during the height of the American Civil War.
From honoring the medical feats of Indigenous civilizations pre-colonization to exploring the prevailing civil rights contributions of Latinos in the U.S., Leguizamo and DeJesus hope to reclaim the stories that are often whitewashed or excluded from the mainstream.
“We’ve been here since 1492 and way before,” said the Colombian-born, Queens-raised actor. “So for us to be so invisible, so erased, so excluded all over the map in America, the media and corporate settings where decisions are being made is just abysmal.”
Leguizamo believes “American Historia” can be the corrective, calling it a “vaccine” to remedy the lack of representation in textbooks.
He points to a 2023 report released by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and UnidosUS, which found that 87% of key topics in Latino history were omitted from U.S. textbooks or mentioned in five sentences or less. The only Latino breakthrough story featured in the last 200 years shared among the six textbooks analyzed was Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And there are consequences, Leguizamo said, pointing to Latino students who do not see themselves reflected in the history they are reading, considering they will make up a third of the public school population by 2030.
“You can abuse us and take advantage of us and take away our political power,” said Leguizamo. “It allows people to ‘otherize’ us because they haven’t seen that we have contributed to the making of this country.”
The actor is no stranger to being critical of Latino deprived histories.
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