Posted on October 17, 2019

Lawmakers Argue for National Latino Museum

Rachel Frazin, The Hill, October 17, 2019

Lawmakers and advocates spoke in favor of a creation of a National Museum of the American Latino on Wednesday.

Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta and Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and José Serrano (D-N.Y.) testified in favor of the legislation in favor the museum at a Natural Resources subcommittee hearing.

“We need to have this Latino museum as soon as possible, especially … of all of the terrible attacks that have been relayed against our Latino community,” Huerta said. “If can have a Latino museum we can really put on display what the contributions are of Latinos in this country.”

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Bipartisan lawmakers have for years promoted legislation in favor of such a museum. The current legislation has 191 Democratic and 27 Republican co-sponsors in the House and 18 Democratic and six Republican co-sponsors in the Senate.

The project has been around for decades. In 1993, the Smithsonian Institution formed a Latino issues task force, and it found the group’s museums “almost entirely” left out the U.S. Latino population.

Other planned museums have also taken a long time to be built. Early plans for an African American museum go back to the 1920s, and serious consideration began in the 1970s. That museum opened on the National Mall in 2016.