Hispanics, The Invisible Ones

By Jaime Andres Pretell

In the US, the Hispanic contributions are all but invisible in the Mall in DC.

If you scroll through the museums, you have:

African American Civil War Memorial Museum

American GI Forum Dr. Hector Garcia

Anacostia Museum
Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum
National Jewish Museum
National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Museum of African Art
National Museum of the American Indian
National Museum of American Jewish Military History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Yet, there is no National Museum of the Latino/Hispanic.

Yet Latinos have played a huge role in the formation of this country.

It seems having been ruled by Spain first has created a coat of invisibility for the millions of Spanish descent, Indigenous descent, African descent and Mestizos/Criollos, who come from those cultures. The US ignores its largest minority, forgetting that Mestizo Americans, who are Native American as well (but ignored in the Museum of the American Indian) are the largest indigenous population in the US. The US ignores the contributions of the Spanish and their descendants in all their wars, starting with the very independence of this country if Spanish Louisiana an Cuba hadn’t provided financial and battlefield assistance that allowed this country to exist in the first place (but completely ignored in the Museums that deal with the American Revolution). The US ignores the huge presence of Afro-Latinos and other Afrodescendientes from the Spanish speaking diaspora (but I bet they won’t be represented in the upcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture, as they have failed to be represented in other African American museums in the area).

Hispanics/Latinos have sent more soldiers to die, per capita, in wars of this nation than any other ethnic group. Yet we are still invisible. So when will we wake up?