Friday, March 30, 2007

Guillermo Martinez: Ken Burns' "Intolerable" Documentary

From Florida's Sun-Sentinel:
Like a forest fire in its earliest stages, the flames have not yet erupted. They soon will, however, for the complete disregard of the Latino experience in World War II in a documentary by Ken Burns, scheduled to air for 14 hours starting Sept. 23, is insulting and discriminatory.

This fire has been simmering for weeks, the result of work by a group of Latino civic leaders -- Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas in Austin; Angelo Falcon of the National Latino Policy in New York City; Marta Garcia, second vice chair of the executive board of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Gus Ch–vez, retired administrator from San Diego State University.

The movement these four activists began a few short weeks ago is catching on and drawing the ire of Hispanics across the nation. For what Burns and PBS have done is simply intolerable.