Latinos decry their absence in WWII film

"We tried to listen to the concerns of a number of groups and to address them in a way that was respectful," Burns said last week through a spokesperson.

But it seems clear that Burns and Lynn Novick, co-executive producers of the film, did not deem the protest of Latino advocacy groups important enough to make the minimal effort to include the segments about Latino soldiers in chronological order in the body of the film. In a world where multimil lion-dollar feature films are franti cally edited up to the moment of release because of poor audience reactions in test screenings, it's hard to understand why Burns and Novick could not do the same.

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Regardless of how ineffectual the filmmakers' attempt to include Latinos as an afterthought was, it is equally flabbergasting that they failed to do so in the first place. "The War" tells its story by looking at stories of people from four communities: Waterbury, Conn., Mo bile, Ala., Sacramento, Calif., and Luverne, Minn. At the very least, Sacramento, part of Mexico in the early 19th century and hometown of PBS commentator and author Richard Rodriguez, should have yielded one or two. There are even studies that reveal a Puerto Rican migrant presence in Waterbury since before World War II.

On Wednesday Burns told a National Press Club audience in Washington that he had reached out to historical societies and veterans' groups, searched archives and announced his presence in the four towns his documentary fo cuses on. But, he said, no Hispanic groups or veterans contacted him or his crew.

"We could not have told the story of the Second World War if we burdened ourselves with seek ing every single group," said Burns.

The problem with Burns' logic is that Hispanics are not just one of a myriad ethnic groups. Now numbering 44.3 million, Hispanics are America's largest minority group.

But although Burns claimed in an NEH grant proposal submitted in 2004 that "The War" would "celebrate American diversity" and would be about "the diversity of wartime America .. African American, Japanese-American and white," he chose not to include Latinos.

Many critics of Burns note that he has a track record of excluding Latinos in his previous projects. Latin jazz musician Bobby Sana bria, who teaches jazz at New School University, decries Burns' "Jazz" documentary because it barely mentions the contributions of Afro-Cuban musicians to the development of jazz. Burns' "Baseball" documentary only bothers to feature Roberto Clemente when today Latino players make up just under 30 per cent of major league baseball players. According to Rivas-Rodriguez, there were only three minutes about Latinos in the jazz documentary and six in the baseball documentary.

Burns has said that he has "worked very hard with our partners to create an outreach program that allows local stations and people in their communities to capture and honor even more experiences."

PBS has poured money into funding a "Community Engagement Initiative," through which more than 100 public TV stations will reach out to veterans to tell their stories. PBS stations such as KNME in Albuquerque, KPBS in San Diego, KPTS in Wichita, Kan., and New Jersey Network Public Television, to name a few, will fea ture Web-based content.

Some observers feel that this new effort has boosted promotion and distribution of Latino-themed documentaries like "Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream," and "The Borin queneers," which tells the remarkable story of the pivotal role Puerto Rican soldiers played during the Korean War. Even long-time documentarian Héctor Galán was recognized when given the grant to produce the new Latino segments for "The War."

But the exclusion of Latinos in the original version of "The War," and then the half-hearted inclusion as nothing more than a DVD extra, tacked on as an afterthought, is a serious failing and should never happen again. As it was for African- Americans, whose story is eloquently illustrated in "The War" in the story of how John Hope Franklin, now a professor emeritus at Duke University, was rejected for enlistment, World War II was a watershed for Latinos in the U.S. After proudly participating in what most Americans consider a noble war fought for just causes, Latinos were empowered to demand their civil rights.

Objecting to the exclusion of Latinos from "The War" is not a demand for special treatment, or a new weapon in the battle of iden tity politics. It is simply a demand for historical accuracy from a project that received significant public funding. And it is a call for respect for the contributions of those who fought and died for the artistic freedom that people like Ken Burns are so passionate about invoking.

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