Latinos Who Fought in America’s Wars: The Battle to Tell Their Stories

Ken Burns said the documentary did not include Latinos because he did not take that issue into consideration.

The battle in this war began weeks before September of 2007. That was when Ken Burn planned to air a 14 hour documentary on PBS stations that completely disregarded the presence and contributions of Latino soldiers, sailors and aviators in World War II.
Latino civic leaders including Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodríguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas in Austin; Angelo Falcón of the National Latino Policy in New York City; Marta García, 2nd Vice Chair of the Executive Board of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Gus Chávez, retired Administrator from San Diego State University, considered was Burns was doing as “insulting and discriminatory.”

The movement these four activists began a few short weeks ago is caught on and drew the ire of Hispanics across the nation. For what Burns and PBS was doing was simply intolerable.

Imagine for an instant the outcry if the Burns/PBS documentary did not have a single mention of the African American experience in World War II. Well, that is what this documentary did with the 500,000 to 750,000 Latinos, from Puerto Rico, from New York, from California, from the South West, and from all parts of the United States who fought in that war.

There may be more, many more, for back in the 1940s, enlistment documents, or discharge papers did not ask if they were Latinos. In some cases they were signed up as Puerto Ricans; others as Mexicans; and still others the space was left blank.
They were not even mentioned in the 14 hour, multi-million dollar production on which Burns, one of the best documentary producers in the nation, worked on for six years.

Not one word! Zero! Nada!

For months the battle between the activists, PBS executives and Burns raged on. For Burns and PBS, African Americans were included because of segregation in the armed forces. Japanese Americans were included because many were interred in camps during the war.

But, what about many Puerto Ricans from the island and from the mainland who fought with honor for their country? What about the Mexican Americans from California and the South West? What about the Cubans, some who volunteered to come help defend the United States of America?

PBS says they could not do anything because that would be infringing on Burns’ artistic freedoms. Burns said the documentary did not include Latinos because he did not take that issue into consideration.

As the campaign gathered heat, Janet Murguía, President of the National Council of La Raza, wrote the President of PBS:
“PBS’s behavior in this matter follows an unfortunate, long standing pattern of virtually ignoring the nation’s 44 million Latinos, the largest minority group in the U.S.,” Murguía said in her March 20th (2007) letter. “Any objective review of PBS’s recent or current programming would, I believe, demonstrate that the number and accuracy of Latino portrayals or Hispanic-focused stories is, by any reasonable standard, inadequate.”

Murguía and Dr. Rivas also mention that in two previous documentaries Burns also ignored Hispanics. One about baseball – also 14 hours devotes a total of six minutes to Roberto Clemente – and not one more second to Latinos, who now make up close to half of the players in the Mayor Leagues and have a long-tradition of contributing to the game. And the other about Jazz, never mentioned Celia Cruz, Tito Puente or Willie Colón.

Dr. Rivas, who for 11 years has been chronicling the history of Latinos in World War II, said the country – particularly in times like these – needs to know of the repeated contribution of Latinos to U.S. war efforts.

Three years have passed since the battles of the participation of Latinos in World War II. Dr. Rivas, She says that finally Burns agreed to include “two interviews with two Mexican American and one native American.” She added that this was done only after the original documentary ended including a fade to black and then it comes back with the interviews with the Latinos and the native American.

Three years later Dr. Rivas has not given up on the struggle to document the contribution of Hispanics in American wars. She now continues her work in an organization called Defend The Honor.org, founded in 1999 and in an oral history project at the university that already has interviewed 700 Latino veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

That’s the right thing to do. Those who died in defense of this country deserve better!

The Americano