John Leguizamo hopes to “flip the script on how America sees Latinos and how we see ourselves,” with his new PBS docuseries “VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos,” which premieres on Friday.
The “Encanto” actor, who also hosts the three-episode series, met with several Latin scholars and professors to discuss the contributions of civilizations dating back to the Incas, the Aztecs and the Indigenous people of the Caribbean — the first New World inhabitants Christopher Columbus encountered — who are now known as the Taíno.
“I’m like the Rain Man of Latin facts, and then together all these professors and experts on Latin history, I was so thrilled to be in the room with each one of them,” Leguizamo told TheWrap in a recent interview.
“We’re the only ethnic group that fought in every single war America ever had: 500,000 of us fought in World War II. We have over 60 Medal of Honor recipients, the largest of any ethnic group. And our contributions are endless, scientific, political and then, obviously, in building the infrastructure and feeding the U.S.,” he said, just one of the many statistics he mentioned during the conversation.
“With the infrared laser, they’ve been finding that the Mayans had highways and it was a much larger area than what the Mayan Empire conquered or ruled. The Amazon had empires as well that we were never aware of, because the jungle eats everything up,” Leguizamo explained.
“Everything is erased so that you can’t take credit for things, like the dahlia and the sunflower. Those are Aztec flowers that everybody thinks belong to Europe. They were ours. The invention of rubber was us. Galvanization was us. The Incas were doing brain surgery that was much more successful than anything until the Civil War in America. The suspension bridge, binary code…” he continued, rattling off innovation after innovation.
The celebrated actor remembers pitching stories about unsung Latin heroes — including Guy Gabaldon, an 18-year-old from East L.A. who captured more than 1,000 enemy soldiers during World War II; or Gilberto Bosques Saldívar, who saved 40,000 Jews in Vichy France and then gave them asylum in Mexico; or Jovita Idar, a journalist who ran her own newspaper and “saved Latin boys from being lynched all over the Southwest. I want to tell that story.”
“I’ve been pitching period stuff with some of these stories. And they tell me, ‘Oh, we’re not doing period stuff. And then, boom, ‘Gladiator II,’ ‘The Crown.’ They sold me a bill of goods,” Leguizamo pointed out.
When asked how he can focus on which story to tell with so many to choose from, he replied, “I just want to tell one! Greenlight one, god damn it. It’s so hard to get Latin content greenlit in America. I see so much Latin talent out there that’s not getting used, and it’s frustrating and painful for me to watch.”
He said that sharing the contributions of Latino people around the world empowers him and he hope it does the same for young Latin people: “I wanted them to see themselves in a new light, show them that they matter, that they’re important, that they can achieve anything they want, because they come from greatness.”
Leguizamo is also proud to bring the series to PBS. “They were the first to have real Latino representation when I was a kid,” he shared, naming groundbreaking 1960s and ’70s series like “Zoom,” “Electric Company,” “Sesame Street” and “¿Qué Pasa, USA,” the first Latino sitcom in the country.
“They were so far ahead of everybody. So to be on this network is really important to me, because those shows saved me, gave me identity,” he said.
“VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos” premieres Friday on PBS.
