There is a saying that it's not just what you do, but how you do it. The current struggle faced by the National Museum of the American Latino exemplifies the truth behind this idiom.

How They Did It

In 2020, the United States Congress approved the creation of the much-needed National Museum of the American Latino. This decision was embedded within the 2020 COVID-19 relief bill, reflecting an application of American bipartisan ideology. In Maria Hinojosa's podcast, 'Shaping a National Latino Museum,' former Republican Representative Ileana Ross Leighton described the museum as a cleverly disguised trojan horse that successfully navigated past her Republican colleagues by hiding within a much larger legislative package. The legislation push was the culmination of almost 30 years of work stemming from a study that showed, “willful neglect” of Latinx Americans by the Smithsonian museum system.

Despite criticisms from prominent Republican figures like Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who stated, “…the last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate, but equal museums for hyphenated identity groups,” the museum was quietly signed into law by the 45th president's administration.

This method of legislative work sparked a clash driven by issues of anti-blackness within the American political structure and within the American Latinx community. And instead of a celebration of the beautiful, diverse tapestry of Latinx American history, the process to build this new Smithsonian Museum has sparked a contentious battleground, aimed at eliminating the influence of Afro-Latinx Americans and any left-leaning Latinx accomplishments in the narrative of Latinx American history.

Battling for Accurate Representation of your Own Identity

After an exhausting 30-year battle to get the museum, Latinx Americans now must battle to tell their own story.

• Olivia B. Waxman of Time magazine reported that a major exhibit on the Latino civil rights movement was scheduled at the Smithsonian, “But after pushback from conservative Latinos in the private sector and the halls of Congress, that exhibit is on hold.”
• After threatening this exhibit, according to Nicole Acevedo of NBC News, funding to the museum was threatened altogether
• DemocracyNow! reported that the exhibit was replaced with an exhibit on Salsa and Latin music

Divide and Conquer Meets Bipartisan Extremism

Two political strategies are driving the White political zeitgeist and causing the problems for the National Latino Museum.

First, divide and conquer. One of the first divide and conquer strategies was the creation of slave patrols to make poor whites feel superior to enslaved Blacks and deter them from creating a coalition to fight the white patriarchal oligarchy. Then you had lynching and the KKK post reconstruction, Jim Crow racial apartheid laws, and many other strategies heading into the modern era of “Nixon’s Southern Strategy” including racial profiling by Police, and extreme voter suppression.

In our time, the methods have evolved away from KKK style mob violence but both systemic physical and policy violence continue and are arguably more insidious.  Now, to access small amounts of capital from white dominated capital structures, like that needed for the museum, groups must distance from “radicals.” Unfortunately, Black is simply a stand-in for radical within the White-run power structures of America. Many communities including some powerful Black communities fall victim to the ideas of anti-blackness by saying things like- we aren’t like those radical Black people, you can safely give us your money.

In her 2022 piece, Rosa Clemente, historian and activist, stated, “From its board of 15 to its chairman’s advisory council of 20 and its staff of five and over 100 partners, there is no broad representation of Afro/Black Latino, Latina, and Latinx people.”

Icons like Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, and Jennicet Gutiérrez have tirelessly championed a global revolution of values that embrace the Black and African diaspora, underlining the need for spaces where the African diaspora, including Afro-Latinx communities, can thrive unapologetically, no matter their political or physical attributes.

What if Latinx advocates and politicians had insisted on this within their legislation?

Second, you have bipartisan extremism. Bipartisan extremism dictates that when the system can get something done, it should just do it even if it is so diluted that it no longer serves its intended purpose.

Hard Close

We are doing a hard stop here. You’ll have to wait for future newsletters where we will stay on this story as it evolves.

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