NEW YORK (AP) — If you think Latin American history began with Christopher Columbus, John Leguizamo has a comment to share.
He points out that in the thousands of years prior to 1492 there were great empires and civilizations, including the mighty Incas, Aztecs and Mayans, whose great advances in medicine, engineering and science continue to this day.
“I draw strength from that,” the actor and activist says, “and it helps me keep going in America today, when things are so difficult right now.”
Leguizamo is spreading this message in a new three-part PBS series, “VOCES: The Hidden History of Latinos,” which begins airing Friday and explores the fascinating history and often overlooked contributions of Latinos.
“A Johns Hopkins study found that 87 percent of Latinos who helped found the United States are not mentioned in history textbooks, and the 13 percent that are mentioned get less than five sentences. So this is about fixing that,” Leguizamo said.
The first part covers the legacies of the Taino, Maya, Aztec and Inca, or what Leguizamo calls “Latin America’s OG civilizations.” The second explores the American Revolutionary War, Civil War and Latinos’ role in building the United States. The third part covers the fight for Latino civil rights and the preservation of their cultural history.
“I want my daughter to be proud of her ancestry and her roots, and I want other Latino children and adults to feel the same,” says co-creator and director Ben DeJesus.
American History features more than a dozen prominent historians, anthropologists, experts and actors reading from the original books, including Benjamin Bratt, Bryan Cranston, Rosario Dawson, Laurence Fishburne, Ethan Hawke, Edward James Olmos, Rosie Perez and Liev Schreiber.
“This is just the beginning for us. We look at this as volume one. We see this as like a virtual visual history book. And the history book is incomplete unless we continue to dig deeper,” DeJesus said.
The series is often painful to watch, especially when Columbus brings three ships carrying soldiers and billions of bacteria to America, signaling an end to the natives with disease, enslavement, rape and forced relocation. The gold plundered from the Americas helped fund the Enlightenment and European commercial revolution.
“To me, Latinos are the most resilient people on the planet because we survived almost total genocide,” Leguizamo said, “our culture, our religion, our language, and yet we still add $3.6 trillion a year to the U.S. GDP.”
For Leguizamo and De Jesus, this is a deeply personal mission. The Incas were famous for developing drug compounds that are still used today, and for techniques in skull surgery that gave them relatively higher survival rates than Europeans. Leguizamo thinks that such knowledge and pride could help increase the number of Latino physicians, who are relatively few in number today.
“Imagine what others would think of us if they knew our rich history. Imagine what we would think of ourselves if we knew our own story,” he tells the camera.
The show is heavily influenced by Leguizamo’s most recent one-man Broadway show, “Latin History for Idiots,” which explores Latino heroes and was inspired by reading required by his son’s private school.
“On stage, there was only so much John could do. As it got closer to Broadway, he had to cut back more and more on the script,” DeJesus says. “Now all of a sudden it’s broadcast nationally for hours.”
There are many stories of heroes like Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, who said, “To hell with the torpedoes” during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, or Carmelita Torres, the 17-year-old housekeeper who held up the port of Juarez in 1917 in protest of humiliating border inspections.
“I do these shows to make everyone in this country and abroad feel that they matter, that they matter, that they have self-worth and that their contributions will not be forgotten,” Leguizamo says.
“We’ve made great progress. We deserve more and we need to get more, because we’re 20 percent of the population and we’re not getting 20 percent of what we pay for.”
As viewers watch a complex ethnic history slowly unfold, the filmmakers hope the film will serve as a lesson and a blueprint for the future for many people, not just Latinos.
“This is not just a project for Latino audiences,” DeJesus said, “No, this is for everyone. When you watch a documentary by Ken Burns or someone like that, all of a sudden you have a new perspective and you feel more enlightened. That’s our hope for all audiences.”
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