Interview with Ray Suarez PBS Newshour correspondent and author of Latino Americans

hispanic-linkBy Juniper Rose, Hispanic Link

Following is an interview with Ray Suarez, broadcast journalist, PBS Newshour senior correspondent and author of “Latino Americans” by Hispanic Link reporter, Juniper Rose. The book accompanies the six-hour PBS documentary series which will debut Sept. 17 on PBS and beginning Friday Sept. 20, will be broadcasted in Spanish on VmeTV. 

“Latino Americans” is the first major documentary series to highlight the history of the more than 50 million Latinos who live in the United States today. This series and book show not only the history of Latino Americans, but fill in the gaps of American history.

Q: Latino Americans is first book and documentary to take on these aspects of history in the depth that you have — What changes do expect will stem from this effort?

A: “I hope people who read the book, and I hope people who watch the television show, will have their curiosity sparked enough to learn more about some of these episodes in history. It is a 250 page book talking about the lives of tens of millions of people over centuries. So you can give an overview — you can give people a framework for thinking about Latino history and how it is part of American history — but there is so much more to know.”

Q: How do you think the U.S. would be different today in relation to the way minority groups in the U.S. are treated if the history your book describes had been taught along side traditional American history?

 

A: “Instead of being treated like intruders, or new arrivals, in some of the more emotional debates over immigrations and over assimilation, I think more people would recognize that Latinos have always been part of the history of the United States from its very earliest days. It might change the way we think about our country and we think about these 53 million people, if this history was taught differently.”

Q: What inspired you to be involved in this project?

A: “The producers of the documentary series approached me and said, ‘Would you write the book to be the companion to the series?’ I was looking to start a new book, it seemed like great timing, it landed right in my lap, so I said, ‘Yeah, sure, let’s get started.’”

Q: Latino Americans focuses on this history being important to all Americans, not directed specifically at Latinos.  How do you think your book and the PBS series will reach and affect the public?

A: “I have a lot of confidence in Americans being curious, interested people. I think many of them will have their interests drawn to wanting to learn more about things in history that they think they already know about — like the Alamo, like the second world war, like the depression. We reconsider the way we look at events, and if you can add new information into the mix, great, you understand the country even better.”

Q: What do you think are important historical aspects of the U.S. that this project will reveal to readers or viewers?

A: “I hope that they realize from the book and the television show, that, for example, the civil rights movement, while an important part of Black American history, is something that involved more than just Black people. It also involved other people, who, in different ways and in different places, were also struggling for their recognition under the law. Whether it was Mexican Americans in schools in the south west, workers in the fields in California or Puerto Rican voters in New York. The struggle that went on during the 60s was a part of a big chunk of humanity’s realization that they weren’t being accorded their full rights as citizens, whether it was women, Black Americans, Latinos or workers. The struggle had many different pieces. I think a big part of the book that will give people something new to chew on is the Latino civil rights struggle.

Q: What has your involvement with this project revealed to you, personally, about American history?

A: “Over and over again there was a struggle by Latinos, in California, in Texas, in Puerto Rico. There was never full, equal citizenship simply granted because it was promised by law. It had to be fought for, it had to be struggled for, it had to be insisted on, and then only after that, was it given. And  yet, in America, in all these different episodes, they remained optimistic, they remained forward looking, they remained patriotic, and instead of forming a disaffected, alienated, separated, pissed off people inside the borders of this country, they kept struggling to just be the same as everyone else.

Q: What was your part in the making of the TV series — other than writing the accompanying book?

A: “I’m one of the historical narrators, so you will see me pop up now and then. So that was fun, and it also gave me a little bit more contact with the TV show and where they were going with different parts, because I did those interviews while I was still writing the book.”

Q: You couldn’t include everything because you were pressed for space, was there anything that was really hard to leave out?

A: “I wanted to include things like the story of Pedro Albizu Campos, who is one of the intellectual godfathers of the Puerto Rico independence movement, because I thought it was important to illustrate that when the U.S. took over Puerto Rico the entire Puerto Rican people didn’t just shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Ok, we’re Americans now.’”

Q: What were some of the challenges that you found during this project, compared to your other projects?

A: “When you are doing a book or a radio series on your own you are also the captain of the ship, you’re deciding in a much more autonomous way what belongs in there and what doesn’t. I was not autonomous, which is not to say I wasn’t enjoying myself, or learning a lot, I was learning a great deal and enjoying the writing, but it was as part of a team, rather than in some of the big projects I’ve done where I was really providing all the big decision making myself.”

Q: How has your background prepare you for writing this book?

A: “I’ve been a reporter for 35 years, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and I’m Puerto Rican. I have always had an interest in the history of Puerto Ricans in the United States, and then later on in my career as a journalist I lived in Chicago and Los Angeles and had the opportunity to cover very large communities of Mexican Americans. As a reporter I’ve been assigned many times to work and do stories in Mexico which helped me get an even deeper understanding of Mexican history and how it interacts with Mexican American history.”

Q: What demographic would you say that this book is directed toward — do you see this as something that will be integrated into schools?

A: “I would love for this to go into schools. I think middle-schoolers who are good readers and high schoolers would have a great time with this book. I wrote it to be accessible to people who don’t necessarily read academic history books, who aren’t history majors, who aren’t necessarily adults. It would be great if American school kids could read this as part of their American history, I would love that.”

Q: Tell me about the possibilities of the book’s circulation in Mexico.

A: “The book’s publishers are doing something that is, I think, new. Instead of bringing out a translation that is Spanish, 30 days, 60 days, six months later, the book was simultaneously published in English and Spanish, which shows where the thinking is on this market. That is a very exciting thing, to be at book signing and sign both additions of the book.”

Q: Where do you hope the series and book will go from here?

A: “Ideally it will be shown more than once, I think with the tremendous effort and the tremendous expense of producing a work like this, you hope that it has another life as a DVD, as something that will be shown again in coming years by public television stations. I hope the book stays in print, and after the initial splash that it makes I hope that it will stay on shelves and in book stores and be something that people read for years to come.”

Q: Was the initial plan always to be the six-hour series with the accompanying book, or did it evolve?

A: “Originally they wanted to do eight-hours, which would have been a little easier, but PBS said it was unlikely that it would be able to easily schedule eight-hours and that six would be better. The producers of the television show were challenged by that because they had in mind certain stories and eras that they wanted to cover, and of course losing almost 25 percent of your show means that you have to crunch to get it all in. From the very beginning a school curriculum, and a website and a book were in the plan.”

Q: Do you think that this documentary has stirred controversies, or do you expect it to when the series comes out?

A: “I’m sure there will be people who quibble with the way we tell  certain very tense parts of our history — like the Texas wars, like the American arrival in California, like the Cuban refugees and their fight agains communism, but I think our story telling and our history is pretty solid and I’m hoping there won’t be too much controversy about that.”

Q: What do you hope that the impact of this series will be?

A: “For all Americans to understand American history better, because this is an American history program, about Latinos in the United States.”

Latino Americas is available from PBS Distribution on DVD and in stores at shopPBS.org. For more information on Latino Americans visit PBS online at pbs.org/latino-americans.

This article was first published in Hispanic Link.

[Photo by Bread for the World]

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