ShareThisBy JORGE MARSICAL
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
On May 23, 2004, filmmaker Ken Burns delivered the commencement day address at Yale University.
He told the graduates: "Your future lies behind you. In your past, personal and collective. If you don't know where you have been, how can you possibly know where you are and where you are going?"
Truer words were never spoken.
Now we know that as Burns mouthed these words, he was preparing "The War," his 14-hour documentary on World War II to be aired on PBS this fall. According to all accounts, the film fails to include a single reference to the Latino experience in that decisive conflict.
This is ironic for at least two reasons.
First, by erasing the contributions of this nation's Spanish-speaking communities, Burns distorts the collective history of all the people in these United States.
Second, his erasure means that he has no clue about where we are and where we are going as a nation. That as many as half a million Latinos and Latinas served in that war as well as in Vietnam, Iraq and every other U.S. conflict cannot be disconnected from the fact that today Latinos are the largest minority ethnic/racial group in the country.
In his speech to the Yale students, Burns went on to say, "I am interested in listening to the voices of a true, honest, complicated past that is unafraid of controversy and tragedy."
If this is so, how could he choose to simplify the history of such a momentous event as World War II and then hide behind "artistic license"?
Community indignation over his gross omission continues to spread following an unproductive March meeting involving PBS president Paula Kerger and a group of five Latina and Latino veterans and media and academic organization representatives. Kerger declined at that meeting to consider any corrective revision of elements to the series. Instead, she said that "local stations" would be welcome to make their own documentaries."
Now the National Council of La Raza, with 300 affiliates, has joined the fray. So has the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which issued a statement stressing "Hispanic soldiers have earned more Medals of Honor on a per capita basis than any other ethnic group." The American G.I. Forum, founded to combat discrimination against returning Latino veterans after World War II, is organizing a boycott of PBS. Hispanic War Veterans Association president Jess Quintero labeled Kerger's decision "an insult to the intelligence and integrity of our veterans and our community as a whole." The list grows.
In his closing remarks at the Yale commencement, Burns told the graduates: "As you pursue your goals in life, that is to say your future, pursue your past. Let it be your guide. Insist on having a past and then you will have a future."
Recently, when confronted by a small group of Latinos in San Francisco, Burns offered a flippant, "The film doesn't include gays either."
Mr. Burns, the Latino community will pursue our future by pursuing our past. Despite your obstinate refusal to recognize willful ignorance, we are insisting that we do indeed have a past whether or not you can see it from your isolated outpost in New England.
Our collective future will not be understood without an acknowledgement of the service and the sacrifices that decades of Latinos have bestowed upon the nation.
(Jorge Mariscal, a veteran of the U.S. war in Vietnam, is a professor of history and literature at the University of California, San Diego. Contact him at jmariscal(at)ucsd.edu.)
