John Leguizamo delves into history in new PBS series 'American Historia: The Untold Story of Latinos'
In “American Historia: The Untold Story of Latinos,” Leguizamo sets the record straight as he delves into U.S. Latino and Latin American history in a three-part series.
For John Leguizamo, his 2017 one-man Broadway play “Latin History for Morons” was his introduction into addressing and tackling the “erasure of our Latin history.”
Now in “American Historia: The Untold Story of Latinos,” Leguizamo sets the record straight as he delves into the sweep of U.S. Latino and Latin American history from the powerful and technologically advanced Indigenous empires to the Civil Rights Movement in a three-part series that premieres Friday on PBS.
“We’ve been crossed out, erased, deleted. And this is our way of undoing that,” Leguizamo said in a video interview with series co-creator Ben DeJesus.
The actor referenced a 2023 study from Johns Hopkins University, which said that “87% of key topics in Latino history were either not covered” in the books that were evaluated or “mentioned in five or fewer sentences.”
“American Historia” follows Leguizamo as he visits historic sites that are relevant to Latino history and speaks with different experts, including Latina civil rights icon and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta.
Rating: 5