John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons

Sunday night I had some free time for once and I decided to watch John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons. This is now showing on Netflix and is a filmed version of his one-man Broadway show. Leguizamo attempts to tell the history of Latin America in the form of a narrative about helping his son work on a middle school project.

The show is based on some true events. When Leguizamo's son, Lucas was in middle school, he was bullied by white kids at his school and called names like "beaner." When Leguizamo informed the faculty and the offending students were punished, the bullying was intensified. Lucas became ashamed of his heritage and his father set out to find some kind of Latin American history his son could be proud of. The show is the product of his research.

I'm glad that he took the time to do some research, but as with any actor's attempt to "teach" history, the result is promblematic. Leguizamo's source material includes Howard Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States," which Stanford historian and education expert, Sam Wineburg describes as a far left "crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between evidence and conclusions." Leguizamo's interpretation of Latin American history echoes the leftist crusade, is reductionist and reiterates leftist canards, one of the worst of which is that Europeans deliberately and systematically wiped out 95% of the indigenous population.

It is 100% true that the European treatment of indigenous Americans was criminal, and they made a solid go at killing off the population, but even liberal estimates put their achievement at a 15% reduction. The other 80% of the population was wiped out by disease. Leguizamo points this out, but his claim is that the Europeans figured out that European diseases were killing the indigenous people and all they had to do was wait around for indigenous people to get sick and then they could go in and waste the indigenous people. In order for Leguizamo's claim to be true, Europeans would have had to have a late 19th century understanding of bacteriology and epidemiology. Unfortunately for the people of the Americas, the European age of exploration began in the late 15th century. Vaccinology wasn't even invented until the late 18th century and even then, it wasn't well understood. The fact is, even if some "hey dude," peace-loving, hippies came to the New World from Europe, the native population of the Americas would still have been decimated by disease.

That's not genocide, because it's not deliberate, that's just plain bad luck.

At least with Zinn's book, Leguizamo was referencing respected, albeit problematic book. What I found surprising were the number of urban legends and meme claims being reiterated as fact by Leguizamo. For instance, he claims that the founding fathers plagiarized the US Constitution, copying it from the Iroquois Constitution. First of all, he doesn't even get the urban legend right. The urban legend is that the American Articles of Confederation were plagiarized from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace. Second, both of these documents are freely available from a variety of reputable sources. Conduct a simple internet search and you can find the full text of the Great Law of Peace, the American Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution. Read them, compare them, and contrast them. They are very different. Furthermore, the founding fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who Leguizamo specifically names had a great deal of respect for Native Americans. While they may have drawn some inspiration from Native Americans (I have no documentation for that), most of the founding documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution were based on the writings of European Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and Charles Montesquieu.

I was also disappointed by how often Leguizamo took the low road of comedy. He often criticizes Donald Trump in his show and I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that he often stereotypically caricatures women, disabled people, people of different races, religions (including Judaism and Islam) and homosexuals. This bothers me on several levels. Donald Trump has been rightly criticized for doing the same thing. Conservative comedians would get raked over the coals for doing a show with content of this nature.

Don't get me wrong, Leguizamo gets a lot correct and if nothing else he addresses serious issues in the American approach to writing history text books. I was surprised he didn't address the Mexican-American studies program in Tucson that was banned by the school board for being un-American based on nothing more than hearsay. I was also surprised that in his search for Latin American heroes for his son, his first major figure was a European born Spaniard, General Bernardo de Gálvez . In his quest for Latin American heroes, he barely gave a footnote Venezuelan born Simón Bolívar , who is often referred to as the George Washington of South America. The Mexican Cry of Dolores lists six heroes of the Mexican Revolutionary era: Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Morelos, Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano Matamoros. He could have told his son about José de San Martín who brought independence to Argentina.

There is one last area where I feel John Leguizamo got something wrong. He claims that Latin American history has been systematically cut out of American history curriculum. I disagree, because in order for Latin American history to have been "cut out," it has to have been part of the history curriculum to begin with and it has not been, which, to me, is even more egregious than the history having been cut out.

Latin American history is usually limited to conflict arising from the secession of Texas from Mexico and the resulting Texas Revolution and then the Mexican-American War.

Usually, the only person who gets main billing for the Texas Revolution is Sam Houston and of course the heroes of the Alamo like William Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett. What about Juana Navarro Alsbury, a Tejana who attempted to negotiate surrender for the Alamo defenders? I don't remember being taught about the Mexican-American War other than it happened and resulted in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican Cession. I don't remember reading about the Radical Whigs and Mexican Oligarchs working together to unify Mexico and the United States into one country, but being rebuffed by racist Americans in the Democrat party, including President James K. Polk and conservative Whigs who were worried that America was already too big and should not expand. I don't remember hearing that General Zachary Taylor was sent to occupy a disputed strip of land and began sending out patrols to taunt the Mexicans into a fight. When the Mexicans did attack a patrol which was on what the Mexicans perceived to be their territory, Polk claimed it was an act of war and used it as an excuse to force the Mexicans to sell the Mexican Cession for chump change.

I'm not suggesting that we give land back to Mexico. What I am saying is that Latin Americans of all national origins have contributed to the formation of this country, probably more so than any other minority group. I’m also suggesting that, while I believe that America is a great country, the teaching of its history should show everything, the good and the bad--warts, bruises, and all.

I do hope that people watch John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons with the understanding that it is primarily entertainment, problematic history with an agenda second, and with that understanding, I hope people will read and research and find out for themselves how their own ancestors contributed to the development and history of this country. As a historian and an aspiring educator, I hope that future curriculum will worry less about putting America in a consistently positive light and just teach history instead. I think America is great. I think America was built on positive ideals. However, America has not always lived up to those ideals and we have some skeletons in our closet. It might change the shade of light that history curriculum shines on America from rosy to stark, but how can future generations learn from the mistakes of the past if they don't know what the mistakes were?

If you’re looking for a good history of Latin America with no agenda, The Penguin History of Latin America by Edwin Williamson is probably the best there is. The Two-Volume A History of Latin America by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes is also good and has the benefit of some great illustrations. Another great book that deals with a lot of border issues during the time just before and just after the Mexican Cession is Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History by Karl Jacoby. I can’t recommend that book highly enough. I’m kind of obsessed with it.

Leguizamo did recommend two books that are worth reading. One is Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. This is a great book that discusses why societies collapse and though it was written 21 years ago, it’s still relevant today. Jared Diamond also has a Ted Talk called “Why do Societies Collapse?” That condenses the findings of the book if you don’t want to read the whole book. Leguizamo also recommended 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Mann is a science journalist and this book consolidates the growing body of work by archaeologists, historians, ecologists, geographers, and anthropologists regarding Native American history.