PBS shines spotlight on ‘Latino Americans’

“Latino Americans” is an ambitious-sounding program that chronicles the history of Hispanics in the United States. Throughout the show, interviews with nearly 100 people will be featured, including such notables as Rita Moreno, Gloria Estefan and labor leader Dolores Huerta. Here are some things to note about the program. The seeds of “Latino Americans” were planted in 2008, and the production launched in 2011. The program, which consists of three two-hour installments, will cover such topics as the Wild West, the Great Depression, the Baby Boom, the civil-rights movement and technology. The story of Hispanics is obviously huge in scope, because Hispanics are such a broad, diverse group of people. That was a challenge to producer Adriana Bosch. “The way we approached the whole idea of Latino is something of an American phenomenon,” she told in May. “We weren’t Latinos until we got to the United States: Before that, we were Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans. Through our shared experiences and lives in the United States, we do become more similar to one another.” (Read the full interview at events.azcentral.com.) People of Mexican descent make up the largest group of Hispanics in the U.S., but neither Bosch nor narrator Benjamin Bratt can claim Mexican ancestry. However, Bosch says, “I went through a personal journey on this, and I embraced very much the narrative of the Mexican and the Chicano in this country. We’re not all that different. We do have different experiences, but I do think we confront the same prejudices and struggles.”

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