by José de la Isla
HOUSTON– Word is out that PBS is providing funding for a two-hour documentary about Latinos in the military. “The War Within” is tentatively scheduled for a two-hour airing in 2010.
It’s welcomed news. And still, it’s bittersweet for reasons that might seem recondite to some.
Gus Chávez, one of the co-founders of Defend the Honor, a leading pressure group, recently noted John Wilson, the PBS veep who oversees all of its programming, still refuses to recognize Latinos were wronged earlier in the documentary by Ken Burns about World War II. And Wilson refuses to acknowledge the new proposed documentary about Latino fighting men and women has anything to do with that other dust-up.
Ken Burns, the video documentary-maker whose productions are widely considered pop history, failed initially to include in his 15-hour PBS documentary The War any mention at all of the role played by half a million Hispanics in uniform during World War II. Latino groups were especially chapped because such an encyclopedic effort will serve to instruct new generations for decades to come about a chapter in U.S. history when we were all in it together.
A student looking for a Ph.D thesis topic in historiography could pick what happened next as an object lesson in how history was rescued from fiction. Beyond the simple who did what and why is the weighty subtext about how important segments of the nation are defined by the script, even by those who purport to know the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction, those who know history can be novelized by leaving important parts out.
The net effect is that national audiences get a false impression. And many new Latinos — the newcomers from abroad and the inexperienced young — do not get a valid national perspective. Those who control the images we see on TV have the power to defi ne all Latinos as recent arrivals, and always a little bit more foreign, a little less relevant, than reality.
One of those taking on PBS was Maggie RivasRodríguez, a university professor and respected journalist, author of A Legacy Greater Than Words: Stories of U.S. Latinos and Latinas of the WWII Generation. She directs an oral history project at the University of Texas, Austin. As co-founder of Defend the Honor, she challenged Burns for his omissions.
After nearly every major national Hispanic organization, members of Congress, prominent Hispanic authorities, sponsors (oops, contributors), veterans and a lot of the public weighed in, Burns fi nally relented and agreed to add 28 minutes produced by Héctor Galán.
That’s what it takes to keep yesterday’s history from becoming today’s fiction.
But that was then and this is now. The PBS suits are still not about to admit the error of their ways, although their action to fund documentary producer Galán’s two-hour program about Latino service in the military speaks for itself.
While PBS was errant, and still stonewalls, it has stumbled onto a content goldmine for national audiences about the nation’s story. In 2010 we will see the results.
This skirmish matters because around 1965 television replaced newspapers as the chief source of news. Ever since, imagery, impressions and myths have dominated as the basis for how we make informed decisions, according to Rick Shenkman, author of How Stupid Are We?
A 2001 Department of Education report said six out of 10 high school seniors knew so little U.S. history they were basically historically illiterate.
Washington, D.C. journalist Steven Knipp reports many high school students think the United States was on the same side as Germany during World War II. Given that, 2010 can’t get here soon enough.
(José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003) writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com). ©2008
