By Elizabeth Méndez Berry and
The story about Latinos in America is an old one. And it isn’t true. Created generations ago by whites to demonize Mexicans and then Puerto Ricans, the racist caricature of Latinos as a menacing foreign monolith persists, even as two-thirds of us were born here and we come from more than 20 different countries.
While we are everywhere in this country, from big cities to small towns, Latinos are largely missing from American media and culture, which makes us vulnerable. President Trump knows this and exploits these fictions for political gain.
Mr. Trump has accomplices. White gatekeepers in media, art and entertainment have long excluded or misrepresented Latinos, particularly Indigenous and Black Latinos, building the cultural scaffolding for the current administration. To defang these old falsehoods, we have to go after their enablers, transform media and cultural power structures and amplify and defend Latino storytellers. We must flex our power as a community.
Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas gave voice to this in a recent column for Variety: “There is a dangerous nexus between the racist political rhetoric and the negative images of Latinos as criminals and invaders that Americans see on their screens.” Mr. Castro added, “Hollywood needs to reckon with its systemic injustice and exclusion of our communities.”
Indeed, all media and culture industries must be held accountable, along with the advertisers, investors and funders who bankroll their behavior.
In Spanish, we say that “la cultura cura” — culture heals. But the U.S. culture industry, which creates seductive images that reverberate around the world, is a key culprit in Latino stereotyping. Latinos buy more movie tickets per capita than any other group, but of 1,200 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2018, Latinos made up only 3 percent of the lead or co-lead actors (and we are 19 percent of the population).
Indeed, all media and culture industries must be held accountable, along with the advertisers, investors and funders who bankroll their behavior.
In Spanish, we say that “la cultura cura” — culture heals. But the U.S. culture industry, which creates seductive images that reverberate around the world, is a key culprit in Latino stereotyping. Latinos buy more movie tickets per capita than any other group, but of 1,200 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2018, Latinos made up only 3 percent of the lead or co-lead actors (and we are 19 percent of the population).
When we are onscreen, we’re usually depicted in narrow ways. A 2019 Opportunity Agenda report found that 25 percent of Latino immigrant TV characters were portrayed as employed, while 88 percent were represented as incarcerated or the perpetrators of crime. Without alternative stories about regular shmegular Latinos, Mr. Trump’s narratives sell to an audience primed by “Narcos” on Netflix.
White elites cannot muffle a huge, vibrant community for decades and not expect consequences. For Latinos in the Trump era, these consequences are deadly, from Hurricane Maria to the Walmart shooting in El Paso and the pandemic, as well as soaring hate crimes.
Latino artists and organizers are leading the way. In book publishing, 3 percent of employees in 2018 were Latino, a statistic that helps explain why the industry was surprised when Latinos were outraged by the stereotypes in the novel “American Dirt.” The author-led Dignidad Literaria movement and Latinx in Publishingare organizing to demand that the industry tell Latino stories, and tell them well.
Protests by Chicano activists when Disney attempted to trademark the phrase “Day of the Dead,” played a major role in making the movie “Coco” the culturally astute blockbuster it became. Whether the goal is to shape the movie or shut it down, protests and boycotts coupled with strategic support for alternatives can work.
Plenty has been written about the toxicity of narco stereotypes, and industry insiders have been organizing against them too. Latinos can learn from Color of Change, which has investigated how TV crime shows misrepresent Black people and campaigned to shut them down, resulting in the demise of the program “Cops." Never underestimate the power of bad publicity and people power.
The facts are as important as the fictions. In the mid-19th century, when white mobs were lynching Mexicans, Spanish-language media covered those murders, leading to public protest and eventual change. Latino journalists from Ruben Salazar (killed by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy during the Chicano Moratorium 50 years ago) to Juan González, Roberto Lovato, Sonia Nazario, Maria Hinojosa and Tanzina Vega have played herculean roles, but their numbers are small, particularly when it comes to opinion writing.