A funny guy takes an angry look at Hispanic history

The world has long known that John Leguizamo can be a funny guy,
His starred in a Mario Brothers movie in 1993, had his own sketch-comedy show on Fox in ‘96. He’s been the voice of Sid the Sloth in “Ice Age” movies and specials. He’s also been the voice of Jack Sprat, Sir Butterscotch and folks named Dizzy, Fluffy, Ziggy and Zip.
But there’s another side “I am a history nerd …. I’m like the Rain Man of Latin facts,” Leguizamo (shown here) told the Television Critics Association.
That’s something we’ve seen lately. There were his intense comments about diversity at this year’s Emmy awards … and now his “American Historia,” at 9 p.m. on three Fridays on PBS; it starts Sept. 27, in front of the Hispanic Heritage Awards at 10.
To Leguizamo – a Colombian native who moved to New York when he was 3 – any interest is overdue. Latinos are “20 per cent of the population, almost 30 per cent of streamer subscribers and less that 6 percent of the lead” roles.
And history can be missing from chools. “In Arizona, Latin history was banned for 10 year …. In Texas, they are allowed to teach Latin history one day of the year.”
So he looked for a mass-media approach. His one-man “Latin History for Morons” was on Broadway and PBS. Now he and director Ben DeJesus hope to turn “Latin Historia” into a multi-year series.
“Look at what they were able to do with other people’s work, like Henry Louis Gates or Ken Burns,” DeJesus said.
Hoping for a multi-year run, “Historia” goes back more than 500 years. “The first Euro language spoken in America was not English,” Leguizamo said, “it was Spanish. We’ve been here forever. From the Mississippi to the Pacific was Mexico until 1840.”
Leguizamo shows a deep rage toward the newcomers — Columbus, he says, wrote that the indigenous people would make good servants; the Spanish killed, maimed and tortured – and toward U.S. governments. At home, he says, they allowed segregation; abroad, they sabotaged democracies.
But he also points out the positives before and after the Europeans arrived. Latinos, he told the TCA:
— Had the largest per-capita involvement in wars – 10,000 men in the Revolution, 20,000 in the Civil War, 120,000 in the first World War, 500,00 in the second … when Gabby Gabaldon, who spoke Japanese, convinced 1,300 men to surrender.
— And are inventors. Leguizamo points to work in developing the electric brake and the artificial heart; DeJesus points to three important things these days — birth control, color TV and sanitizer.