Filling the historical gaps with Latino Smithsonian

Last week, Sen. John Cornyn testified before the Senate Rules Committee on the National Museum of the American Latino Act.

The bill, which the Texas Republican co-sponsored with Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., paves the way for the Smithsonian Institution to create a museum dedicated to the contributions of American Latinos.

Only a week before, Cornyn tweeted an awkward message about letting the political process in the election run its course, referencing a New York Times story about 200 boxes of uncounted votes that turned up in Puerto Rico. He caught some flak for this, then responded he never said anything about those votes affecting the winner of the 2020 presidential election. It’s a benefit-of-the-doubt moment, but it makes sense; that tweet read like a rookie mistake, and Cornyn — who won more votes in Texas than President Donald Trump — is no rookie.

Unlike Texas voters, Puerto Rican voters don’t get a say in the presidential election. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, not a state. Some want statehood, others want to remain a commonwealth. Some want better representation, others don’t want senators and representatives from there in the Beltway. Many Puerto Ricans prefer Spanish to English, even though English is required in schools. It’s complicated, as we learned after Hurricane Maria wrecked the island in 2017. That’s when a lot of us found out, for the first time, that Puerto Ricans are American citizens.

Remember someone floating the idea that the U.S. could trade Puerto Rico for Greenland? It sounds like a punchline, but there were surely a lot of Americans who thought, “Oh. We can do that?”

There is a lot about Puerto

Rico that mainstream America doesn’t know. And that, my fellow Americans, is why America needs a National Museum of the American Latino.

The Smithsonian Institute is America’s family album. It tells our story using pictures and artifacts; it records the details of our triumphs and mistakes. Yet, in 1994, an internal study titled “Willful Neglect” pointed out that American Latinos were missing from the photo album, and in the 25 years since, there has been a push to include these stories.

It’s important to do so because Latinos have been part of America since before it was America. People were speaking Spanish in St. Augustine, America’s oldest city, 65 years before a Puritan minister named JohnWinthrop delivered a sermon preparing the first group of Massachusetts Bay colonists to leave England to build a shining city on a hill. That sermon was in English and those settlers were from England, and that’s why we think of British colonies and Thanksgiving when we think of the beginnings of our nation.

Incidentally, San Juan, Puerto Rico, was settled in 1521, which makes it the oldest Europeanestablished city in the U.S., if you count the territories. Not that anybody’s keeping score.

The point is that Latinos were woven into the American fabric quicker than you can say Guadalupe Hidalgo, and yet even in 2020, Latinos don’t seem to exist in our collective history. A quick look at the history of the American Southwest shows the gaping holes in the tale of America. The goal is to tell the story as it really was, not how it was told by those who spoke and wrote only in English.

Cornyn, a seasoned politician who grew up in San Antonio, knows this. In the ’70s, he went to Trinity University and then to law school at St. Mary’s University. He’s not pandering; he really knows us — even though we aren’t in Congress. Or on primetime television. Or the bestseller list.

“As a proud Texan and a senator from a border state, I’ve been fortunate to experience firsthand the tremendous influence of Latinos on our country and culture throughout my life,” he said Tuesday.

Clearly, he gets it. Inclusion within the Smithsonian Institute isn’t just a political giveaway; even if it was, it’s something Cornyn clearly doesn’t need. A museum showcasing Latinx contributions is the right thing to do because it completes the story, acknowledging that omissions that were made are being corrected. And it’s a correction all Americans should want, because it is our collective story.

Sometimes, mistakes are made. But those who’ve been around understand the importance of making sure things are set right.