This is going to be a topic I've never really spoken out about even though it has been a major factor in my life. Growing up in white bread Orange County in the 70s and early 80s, most everyone around me was Caucasian or Mexican/Latino/Hispanic. I can remember one Hawaiian kid and there was a Filipino family who lived down the street from us but in my mind, they were practically Mexican. I mean, they had the same color skin. That's literally just the way it was and the naïve way I thought at the time.. The vast majority of my friends were white because that's pretty much all I had around me except for the handful of other Mexican kids. It's something I never thought of because at the time, I was truly color-blind. Race wasn't something a kindergartener through 5th grader ever thought of... At least, I didn't. This despite one event that happened, I believe it was my 1st grade year and I was running late to class. A small group of probably 3rd or 4th grade kids were blocking the hallway entering the school and as I'm trying to get past them, they start taunting me, calling me a 'Dirty Mexican.' At the time, the only thing I was thinking was, 'I'm not dirty, I shower every day.' I genuinely didn't understand what they meant by it at the time.
It was when I was moved into a GATE Program... Let me back up a bit, at the time GATE didn't exist, it was called MGM. And holy shit, if I didn't get asked by just about everyone I knew about how we were making movies. Neighbor even asked me if I knew when the next Star Wars was going to come out. Anyway, it was in these classes, that I had to get bussed to a whole new school to attend classes at, and I started meeting kids of other nationalities and races. Hey, you're Japanese? How cool! How do you say this in Japanese? I got that all the time about Spanish, so it was funny to me that I could ask someone else something I didn't know. But again, it didn't really matter to me at the time who was what. We were all classmates, most of us friends, there were some kids in the classes that irritated me to no end but I imagine it was like that everywhere else.
But as I said, growing up in predominately white Orange County, I literally didn't meet a Black kid until 5th grade. Richard, his name was. He lived in the same neighborhood as a few of my other classmates so we'd either walk to school and home as a group or one of our parents would drive us there and back. Sometimes we'd take the school bus and listen to the Mighty 690 on those rides. Oddly enough, and I don't recall what it was that even caused some friction with Richard but one day, he decided he was going to call me out and fight after school. I literally cannot, for the life of me, remember what it was that set him off other than, he suddenly got a chip on his shoulder one day and told me he was going to wait for me by the fence on the way out of the schoolyard. Mind you, in the 5th grade I was the biggest kid in class. I don't mean fattest/heaviest set, although I was that, too. But also the tallest. My final year in elementary, it was a daily thing to see who was the biggest between me and Wes. Seriously. But in 5th grade, it was me all the way. And that could have been Richard's issue at the time. Trying to "prove" himself by taking on the biggest kid in class. But, being the biggest also meant I know what I could have done to him if I had allowed any fight to occur. I would have mopped the floor with him and then be the one in trouble because 'I should have known better.' Not worth it, so I took the bus home that day.
I don't think Richard even finished out the school year with us, so part of me wonders what ever happened to him. If the family moved away or he was having other issues at the time that maybe his parents thought they needed to reign him in. I'll never know. But this story is starting to drift from my original topic.
It's in this backdrop of suburbia that I grew up color-blind and just accepted everything that was around me at face value. And in 1977, like most other kids across America and the world at the time, we witnessed the spectacular that was, Star Wars! The story of a boy, a girl and a universe. Now, with a tagline like that, you cannot possibly tell me that Lucas always intended for Luke and Leia to be brother and sister. But that didn't matter at the time. I was enamored with the entirety of it. Spaceships, aliens, laser swords, masked villains dressed in black with an asthma problem. It never crossed my mind just how lily white the entire cast was. And then to find out years later that the voice of the bad guy, Darth Vader, was really the voice of a black man? Pretty much the only character of color within the Star Wars universe. At least until the guy from the Colt 45 commercials was in The Empire Strikes Back. And he was a bad guy too, until he wasn't.
But it was in these films, and as much as I love Star Wars, it was coming to grips with what I started to realize once I was getting older, into my high school years. In the story of a far off distant universe, there didn't seem to be a lot of people of color. And hardly anyone that looked like me. A fantastic universe filled with giant talking slugs, little green elves with magic powers, even people that looked like fish. But hardly any brown people... In fact, in the original trilogy, I can't think of a single brown person once you get past Billy Dee Williams. How... disappointing. Where were the heroes that looked like me?
And that's been a constant criticism of Hollywood. By and large, when you DO see a person of color, they're often the maid or the gardener or the street thug that gets beat up by the middle aged white guy when confronted.
It's only been in recent years we're finally starting to see representation in popular culture. Positive representation matters. While there have been plenty of minority lead features, we might only have seen one Latino character in TV and films and they've usually been played by Hector Elizondo, Miguel Ferrer or Edward James Olmos. Going further back, it was always Ricardo Montelban or Anthony Quinn. Bear in mind, for the purposes of this post, I'm going to use Latino/Latina for simplicity. I don't want to get into the whole discussion over Latinx/Hispanic/Chicano/etc. Roles were few and far between and always fell into the laps of these fine actors. Believe me, I hold nothing against them, they're all very talented artists. But rather, the studio system only seems to allow for one or two minority actors to take on all those roles. See also; John Leguizamo, Salma Hayek, Danny Trejo, Benjamin Bratt. Why couldn't these actors play more mainstream roles that weren't associated to a nationality or stereotype?
Thankfully, that finally started to change just before the millennium. And the first one I really got excited about was in the Star Wars universe when Jimmy Smits was cast as Bail Organa. HOLY SHIT!!! I can't even describe how excited I was for that. One of the founders of the Rebellion, the adoptive father of Princess Leia and he's Puerto Rican! FUCK YEAH!!! The part itself stayed relatively minor but it was still a notice that a change was underway. And it was in the sequel trilogy we got another big part go to a Latino actor. Resistance X-Wing pilot, Poe Dameron was to be played by Oscar Isaac, whose mother is Guatemalan and father is Cuban. Oh, you didn't know he was one of us? I guess if you knew his full name was actually Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada, you might have figured it out sooner. Which makes the whole 'fan outrage' over Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega so confusing. Obviously, that toxic 'fanbase' were upset to see minorities in Star Wars. "A Black Stormtrooper?! How DARE they!" But they let Oscar Isaac slide. I don't get it either.
Later, Rogue One introduced us to Cassian Andor, played by Mexican actor Diego Luna and he's reprising his role in the Disney+ series named after his character. Then the Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal, is Chilean. And I honestly couldn't be happier. Our people, nuestra gente, are finally seeing a foothold in the Galaxy Far, Far Away and I'm here for it. Literally, I am alive to see it happen!
Now if we can make some more inroads into the comic book universe. There haven't been many Latino superheroes in comics as a whole. So the few parts that end up with Latino actors are few and far between. John Leguizamo in the 90s Spawn film as Violator/Clown. Jessica Alba, who is a few generations removed from her ancestral roots, she has to go back to her great-grandparents for any ties to Mexico. And I thought her recent diatribe regarding how Hollywood needs to do better in casting minorities in the comic book genre seemed a little tone deaf. Considering how much the industry has improved from the days when she threw on a blonde wig and blue contacts to portray Sue Storm in the awful Fantastic Four movies.
