TV Panel Discussion With Rita Moreno, Benjamin Bratt, and Ray Suarez
The three-part six-hour PBS documentary series, Latino Americans, chronicling the Latino experience in America, made its national debut on Tuesday, Sep 17. Parts Two and Three will be aired during the next two weeks (check local PBS listings). At this summer’s meeting of the Television Critics Association, three of the series’ participants gathered to discuss their participation in the landmark documentary, as well as to discuss their individual journeys as Latinos in America. The panel included actor Benjamin Bratt – who narrated the series, journalist Ray Suarez – who authored the series companion book, Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation – and all-around performance diva Rita Moreno, one of the few performers to a achieve an EGOT (individual Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards).
It was interesting that one of the first questions came from a Miami-based journalist who didn’t understand why there was so much regional bias amongst Latinos in the U.S. He gave the example of Cubans he knew expressing criticism of Mexicans. He wanted to know if the series addressed what he considered to be an East Coast/West Coast snobbery and if any of the panel member had experienced it.
Rita Moreno quipped, “I’m certainly not Mexican and I’m not Cuban. I would like to say that this is not new. I don’t speak of the problem between the Cubans and the Mexicans, but between all of the nationalities who speak Spanish. We are not all that different in some respects from Americans and Anglos who talk about someone from Brooklyn who doesn’t know how to talk English. A lot of people make fun of Puerto Ricans because they speak a rather odd Spanish. We have a strangely guttural “R,” which I think comes from the Dutch. I think that as long as we’re a universal people, if we hold out our hands to each other, then we are mighty. We are a multitude as opposed to individual groups. Can we ask that of the (white) people in Alabama about the way they feel with respect to black people?
Ray Suarez piped in, “As a Puerto Rican from Brooklyn, I get it both ways.”
Since this was a gathering of television journalists, I asked if the panel members felt that the ongoing paucity of Latino actors on television is reflective of the lack of clout Latino television viewers have, even though Latino viewing numbers of primetime network and cable television have increased dramatically during the last 20 years. And most Latinos that are hired, are boxed into Latino-specific characters.
Bratt shrugged, “We are underrepresented in every aspect of the casting process, from our numbers to the diversity of the roles we are allowed to play. Look at the major network shows right now. What brown faces do you see that are just people, you know, living their lives? But you are right. There are more and more Latino television viewers. And the industry will eventually have to change because the big brown wave is not only coming…it’s here. It might be another few decades before we acquire absolute equality on the TV landscape, but it is better now and will get even better.”
Moreno added, “In keeping with that, what about Asian actors? Oh, my God. It’s really hard. You will see them in some salient roles here and there, but they’re practically invisible on television. It’s amazing how many you don’t see in films and television, and there’s some fabulous actors. So our business has a long way to go, I think. It’s not just us Latinos. I want to stretch my hands out always to all the other nationalities, and it’s very difficult.”
Following up on Bratt’s response that it might take another couple of decades to level the ethnic playing field in the entertainment industry, Suarez feels that there is historical precedent for the changes that are happening now. “We only have to look back to the past of the United States to see that it happens on two tracks, never in just one way and in one place. It happens both organically, as some of these (ethnic) dividing lines dissolve and erode and definitions melt into each other; but it also happens through court cases and pressure. In respect to Latinos making their way into what traditionally has been a white male television industry, the pressure has to come from Latinos moving into the executive positions as writers, directors, showrunners, and into management.
Suarez feels that one of the important aspects of the Latino Americans series is the lessons it teaches the Latinos of today about the mistakes and the successes of the past that can be built upon. “One of the most significant success stories is the segment on the mobilization of the migrant farm workers in California. “Their leader Cesar Chavez was smart enough to know that in order to engage a wider community, he had to march on something that was everybody’s, and that was the state capital of what’s now by far the largest state in the union. As to today’s inequities in the TV industry, in order for the greater mainstream television viewing audience to accept us, they have to see primetime television programming that is created and produced by people with names like Martinez, Lopez and Gomez. Then they’ll know we area all playing in the big leagues together.”
Latino Americans is a production of WETAWashington, DC; Bosch and Co., Inc; and Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), in association with Independent Television Service (ITVS). Adriana Bosch is the series producer.
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