New Latino Smithsonian museum moving forward after Republicans threatened funding
If telling a balanced story about Latino contributions to the United States is a difficult task, then doing it in a single building in Washington amid disagreement in Congress over how to tell that history may be downright arduous.
That’s what the leadership of the fledgling National Museum of the American Latino is learning as they attempt to secure funding and political support for the nation’s newest Smithsonian institution, which is still years from breaking ground.
The museum, led by Founding Director Jorge Zamanillo, the former CEO of HistoryMiami, received bipartisan criticism this summer over its first effort at a public display. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, including Miami’s Mario Diaz-Balart, were so incensed by the exhibit that they pushed legislation forward to pull the museum’s funding.
But following a meeting late last month that eased tensions, the museum’s leaders say they are learning from the friction, incorporating feedback into their programming and working to create a venue that represents and receives support from all Hispanic Americans.
“For the first time, we’re going to have a museum, a national museum that represents all Latino communities across the U.S.,” Zamanillo, a Miami Senior High alum, told the Miami Herald. “And I think at the end of the day, most people will see that as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to support us.”
The museum, approved by a bipartisan vote of Congress in 2020, is barely in its infancy.
There is not yet a specific site for its home, which must be built along or near the National Mall.
For the museum’s first effort, they’ve opened an exhibit inside the National Museum of American History called “¡Presente!: A Latino History of the United States.”
The exhibition, housed in a 4,500-square-foot gallery, was the product of years of planning and touched on 500 years of history, including colonial legacies and wars of expansion, according to a museum spokesperson and materials on its website. Interactive displays featured personal stories from Latinos about their own contributions to the country.
But about a year after it opened last summer, Republicans began to openly protest. Following visits, they said the exposition provided a one-sided picture of Latinos as “victims” and glossed over important and complex aspects of history.
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WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE OFFENDED IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER BY SOMETHING THAT COMES OUT OF THIS MUSEUM BECAUSE WE ARE SO DIFFERENT IN SO MANY WAYS. BUT WE CAN’T THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER. California Congresswoman Norma Torres
Diaz-Balart, a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, described the exhibition as “patronizing” and “quasiracist” during a subcommittee hearing last month in which lawmakers voted to block federal funding of the museum and the exhibit. He said he’d been trying to get the Smithsonian’s attention since December, and canceling the museum’s funding was the only way to force the issue.
Diaz-Balart, who is Cuban-American, protested the inclusion of a military deserter and was frustrated by a small display on Cuban balseros that in one text attributed flight from the commu