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Is there room for a Latino American museum on the National Mall? That is the question being asked as the Smithsonian Institution mulls the creation of a separate museum to celebrate the history and achievements of Latino Americans, less than a decade after the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian and four years before the not-yet-built museum of African American history on the National Mall.
Advocates of a Smithsonian Latino museum say it would finally honor the contributions of Latino Americans to the United States - contributions that are as old as the country itself, but have been conspicuously underplayed in the country's museums and on the National Mall, largely invisible. But supporters also admit they are expecting an uphill battle to prove the museum's relevance in a political environment often openly hostile toward Latino Americans.
"It's going to be ugly," Ronald Mize, Latino Studies and sociology professor at Cornell University, said in a phone interview today. "I fully expect that once this gets into the political debate we will see all the ugliness of anti-immigrant discourse here. It's one of the greatest obstacles we'll have to overcome and probably serves as an example of why we need the museum in the first place."
A federal commission created two years ago to explore what a Latino American museum would look like is scheduled to present its plan to Congress and President Obama on May 5. And already, critics have begun to voice skepticism about whether the Smithsonian should build another ethnic museum.
"I don't want a situation," Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told 'The New York Times' this week, "where whites go to the original museum, African Americans go to the African American museum, Indians go to the Indian museum, Hispanics go to the Latino American museum. That's not America." The 'Times,' which first reported the story Thursday, noted that the museum has support from some members of Congress as well as celebrities such as actress Eva Longoria. But some say it will need widespread political support to be built.
Members of the commission, known as the National Museum of the American Latino Commission, declined to speak publicly about their plan before it's unveiled next month, but said they expect much of the funding for the museum to be raised privately.
Virginia Sanchez-Korrol, a history professor emerita at Brooklyn College and the author of 'From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City,' said she expected fundraising to be the most difficult challenge for the museum. "I'm expecting a budget battle," Sanchez-Korroll said today. "It's curious, because when it comes down to Latino issues it's always a matter of budget. This funding has to be found."
Sanchez-Korrol said the museum is a matter of correcting the record - that the experiences of Latinos don't run parallel to American history, but are entwined with it instead. "The point is not that it is a separate history. The point is that this is a part of American history," she said.
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, a history professor at the University of Texas, said the best-case scenario is that the ethnic museums being built on the National Mall will one day become something of the past. "If they are built properly - if they show the absolute entanglement of the history of these people to mainstream America - they will have to become obsolete," he said. "But that's only if they do their job well."
The National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open in 2015, has been generations in the making and suffered years of setbacks commission members say they are doing their best to avoid. But Mize said that painful, ongoing process should serve as a warning. "The longstanding fight to get an African American presence on the Mall should tell us that this could be a battle," he said. "As Latinos, we need to be cognizant that that could be our history too."
Estuardo Rodriguez, a lobbyist with the Raben Group who is working with the commission, said the museum is worth the fight. "A museum like this really would change things for Hispanic Americans. It tells the rest of the country that our story is the American story," he said. "And my hope is that the museum isn't just full of Hispanic Americans, but that it's full of all Americans who want to learn more and push back against the negative stereotypes you hear when it's election season and politicians need a punching bag."
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