by Adolfo Flores
Ken Burns
In spite of the release of Ken Burns’ World War II documentary Sept. 23 and an accompanying book Sept. 11, Latino advocates claim the battle against Burns and the Public Broadcasting Service is not over.
The Defend the Honor Campaign, which has been at the forefront of the battle, has maintained that the addition of 20minutes of material on the Latino experience in Burns’ 15-hour series is not enough.
The supplementary book, “The War: An Intimate History 19411945,” does not include any mention of the Latino contribution in WWI I, according to the advocates, who plan to target their immediate actions against these materials.
“We’re working hard to not make this book available in our libraries and schools, so that our children are not exposed to this incredible omission of our American patriots,” Gus Chavez, one of the founders of the Campaign, told Weekly Report.
Defend the Honor has reached out to several hundred school boards, mostly throughout California and to state legislators such as Speaker Fabian Núñez and Assemblyman Joe Coto.
Each school board in the state decides whether to use these materials, according to the advocates.
In San Antonio, Defend the Honor activists are also urging schools and libraries not to purchase the materials while urging people to “consider” boycotting products and corporate sponsors related to The War.
Members of the Campaign will hold a panel discussion and a public forum at the Gala Theatre Oct. 8 in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to approach similar situations to that encountered by The War.
To Burns and PBS, the controversy has long been resolved. When asked about the unresolved concerns of Latino advocates, Burns told Weekly Report, “If you were going to please everyone, it would be the blandest thing on earth. It wouldn’t be art anymore. It would be political correctness.”
Burns said he showed a preview including additional interviews with two Latino veterans to a group of Hispanic veterans in Oklahoma and said, “They loved it.”
During a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, Burns said, “We spend our entire lives consumed with that which makes us different, and yet the purpose of art is to try to suggest ways in which we come together.”
But San Antonio members of Defend the Honor maintain the campaign’s struggle is not with the artistic aspect of the project.
“PBS officials stated in a news release…’PBS’s goal is for ‘The War’ to reach into every home end classroom so together we can better understand what we as a nation experienced in those difficult years and what we 1as a nation accomplished,” according to a Defend the Honor statement. “If these are the intentions of PBS, indirectly they are saying that Latinos did not make any contributions to World War 11 and have no right to be acknowledged in anyone’s home or classroom.”
In the 2005-2006 school year, 47.6 percent of enrolled students in California were Latino, according to the state’s Department of Education.’
Burns said during his presentation that initially he issued notices in the cities where the interviews were conducted, but that no Latinos came forward.
“There ere still a couple of fringe groups who refuse to be satisfied and who seem to enjoy the attention they receive by continuing to attack PBS,” KOCE, its station in Huntington Beach, Calif., PBS said in a statement.
“They say we’re a fringe group. This is the mainstream media you are talking about,” Maggie RivasRodríguez, co-founder of Defend the Honor, told Weekly Report. “We’re part of America.”
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