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Can A Museum End A Rivalry? The Smithsonian
American Latino Museum
Lecture by Luis R. Cancel
May 29, 2013
Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Niterói, RJ
Abstract
The presentation will trace the long roots of rivalry between two European monarchies;
England and Spain, whose desires to control the wealth and land of the New World lead
them into direct competition in North America. The former British colonies maintained
the rivalry after establishing their independence. The religious differences between
Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Catholic Spain and its New World subjects led to
antipathy and constant clashes including all three Seminole Wars, the Mexican
American War (1846-48) and concluding with the Spanish American War (1898). These
conflicts and conquests led American educators to teach the History of the United
States from the Anglo-Saxon perspective, referring to the earliest settlements of the
British and ignoring or downplaying the history and participation of Spanish settlers.
The need to reconcile America’s history, to tell, in a factual and inclusive manner the
continental history of the country, has become vitally important as the present-day
society accepts the reality that 1 in 6 Americans are Hispanic and the youngest and
fastest growing portion of the population.
The proposed expansion of the venerable Smithsonian Institution, the Nation’s museum,
to include a facility dedicated to highlighting and discussing American History, art and
culture through a Latino lens. The National Commission that issued its report quotes
Dana Ste. Claire:
“There are significant parts of American history that have been left out
because of how it has been written over the years. It is imperative that the
story of America include the rich history of Hispanics, beginning with Juan
Ponce de Leon’s landing in la Florida in 1513 and the founding of St.
Augustine, the nation’s oldest continuously occupied European settlement,
in 1565 by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles — indeed, this was First
America. The Hispanic peoples have played a principal role in the cultural
and historical development of our nation and the founding of our nation;
symbolically, this is a very powerful story to tell and statement to make.”
The proposed Smithsonian American Latino Museum has been a long time in coming
and when it is finally authorized by the United States Congress and signed into law by
the President, it will symbolize the nation’s willingness to honestly and fully engage in a
discussion about its rich history, past, present and future. It will be a bold experiment in
seeking to reconcile deep divisions, echoes of ancient rivalries that still carry kinetic

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energy, but it will be an institution designed to use the most contemporary tools for
communication and dialogue. It is through honest, constructive dialogue that we teach
and that people of varying points of view can find common ground.
Background
In order to give participants today a quick idea of the nature of the rivalry in the title of
my presentation, I need to take you back to the year 1776. In that year Thomas
Jefferson is in the city of Philadelphia surrounded by dozens of delegates from the
thirteen British colonies discussing and debating the wording of the Declaration of
Independence, the document that would help to create a new independent nation in the
New World.
Leaping from the Atlantic coast clear across what we today call the North American
Continent, and passing hundreds of Indigenous tribes and confederations along the way,
we land on a beautifully wooded hill top on the Pacific Coast, where Juan Bautista de
Anza decides this will be the ideal spot to establish El Presidio Real de San Francisco,
he orders José Joaquin Moraga to actually establish the fort on September 17, 1776, in
that act, planting the seed that would become the City of San Francisco.
There you have in 1776, within months of each other, the subjects of two European
rivals, England and Spain, on opposite sides of the same continent, claiming the same
landmass in between. Both monarchies, of course, treating the Indigenous people as
chattel to be used for cheap labor and converted into Christians or killed off.
Protestant England and Catholic Spain, a rivalry rooted in the 16th
century,
encompassed more than just a fight over land and riches in the New World, it had
morphed into a religious rivalry as England under Queen Elizabeth I embraced
Protestantism and Spain became the Papacy’s greatest defender. Religious passions
were and are the most intractable beliefs and finding common ground can be the most
difficult to obtain. The two countries, formerly allies against their common enemy the
French, would harass each other’s ships, steel each other’s treasures, and attack the
other’s colonies for several hundred years.
It is no wonder that there was a deeply engrained antipathy in the Thirteen Colonies
against the Spanish. This competitive and hostile view of the Spanish easily carried
over into the new nation of the United States of America. We can easily see those
biases by examining Spanish Florida as a case in point.
The state of Georgia borders Florida to the north and settlers in Georgia would raid and
attack Seminole Indian settlements in Florida and the Seminole would respond in kind.
These conflicts escalated in 1817-1818 into the First Seminole War, General Andrew
Jackson would lead the US Army against the Seminoles and after a year, effectively
controlled East Florida. The Adams-Onis Treaty signed with Spain in 1819, ceded

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Spanish Florida to the United States in exchange of $5million and the renunciation of
any claims by the U.S. to Texas as a result of the Louisiana Purchase.
As a third grade student, when I began to be taught American History, the textbooks
and the curriculum discussed Jamestown (1607) in Virginia as the earliest successful
European settlement, and I learned about Capt. John Smith and his heroic exploits.
Nothing was said about San Agustín which was founded in September 1565 by the
Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. St. Augustine, Florida, now recognized as
the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental US,
subsequently served as the capital of Spanish Florida for two hundred years, but the
American History my generation was taught never mentions that or the story of Alvar
Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the first European to spend eight years living with the
indigenous people of the southwest, walking through present-day Texas, New Mexico
and northern Mexico.
From 1528-1536, Cabeza de Vaca went from second in command of a Spanish
expedition of nearly six hundred men that landed in Texas to a half-naked slave of
various native American tribes. In order to survive, he learned to be a trader, a surgeon
and an ethnographer, recording details of the customs of the native peoples he lived
with.
But these historical figures and their exploits are largely unknown to the general
population in the US. To this very day, if you look up History of the United States in
Wikipedia, the article in discussing the Colonial Period refers to “…the first settlements
were established in 1607.” This is a clear reference to Jamestown not St. Augustine.
American History, as taught in American schools, reflects the in-grained cultural values
of the majority population, and they view Hispanic Americans as the “Other,” not the
same as themselves. This distancing makes it difficult to find common ground and to
weave together a historical narrative that respects the stories and contributions of both
segments of American society.
Establishing A Commission
In May of 2008 President George W. Bush signed public Law 110-229 (s. 2739) which
established a bi-partisan Commission of 23 members appointed by the President and
the leadership of both parties in Congress. These Commissioners were chosen based
on their qualifications in museum administration, expertise in fundraising, experience in
public service, and their demonstrated commitment to the research, study, or promotion
of American Latino art, history, and culture.
Their mandate was to “…formulate a plan for a sustainable world-class institution whose
mission is to illuminate the American story — for the benefit of all.” The Commission
was given two years to undertake their study and find the best path for creating a
museum that would use the most contemporary interpretive tools and reach the
broadest possible segments of American society.
The Commission organized itself into six core committees to delve deeply into various

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technical aspects of the question:
The Public Communications Committee
The Fundraising Committee
The Vision, Mission & Programs Committee
The Facility & Site Selection Committee
The Governance Committee
The Procurement Committee
Each committee worked with a team of consultants hired by the Commission to assist it
in its work and there were two Co-Chairs of Commissioners that guided the work of their
committee and the consultants. I was Co-Chair, along with Sandy Colón-Peltyn, of the
Facility & Site Selection Committee.
Early on, the Commission opted not to have a single large conference in Washington,
DC but to take the work of the Commission to major cities with large concentrations of
Latinos, thus making it easier for the community to participate in the fact-finding
process. There were eight public hearings around the country held in Chicago,
Albuquerque, Austin, Miami, St. Paul, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Juan,
Puerto Rico.
In each of those cities, the Commission would pose several key questions to get the
community’s response, these included:
- How would a National Museum impact on your local Latino cultural organizations?
- Should the museum be part of the Smithsonian?
- Where should this National Museum be located?
- Would you financially support a National Museum?
The answers to those questions, over the course of 14-months of hearings, were
remarkably consistent. The public overwhelmingly told us, city after city, that such a
National Museum should be established; that it should be part of the Smithsonian; that it
should be in Washington, DC; that they would support the museum financially and that
they would look to the National Museum to help support and work collaboratively with
their local Latino cultural organizations.
On the question of WHERE in Washington, the Commission always asked if we could
developed the museum more quickly on a site away from the National Mall or take
many years longer and have it ON the Mall, what would they prefer? The answer always

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returned unequivocally ON THE MALL.
The benefit to the Commission of having surveyed the American people so broadly, was
that we could return a report to Congress and the President that authoritatively could
quote the voices and opinions of its citizens.
The question of being part of the Smithsonian or not was very surprising. Not that many
years before, a coalition of Latino cultural leaders had issued a tough report on the
Smithsonian entitled “Willful Neglect” and the report was an indictment of the nation’s
most famous museum, for the way that it had programmatically and operationally
underserved the Latino community. The report had prompted Congressional hearings
and considerable amount of negative press but on the positive side, the Smithsonian
embraced its self-criticism and took concrete steps to try and improve how it reached
and interacted with the nation’s Hispanic population.
Congress provided additional funding specifically for a “Latino Initiative” that would
encourage the Smithsonian’s various museums to develop staff and programs that
would highlight Latino history, art and culture. The Smithsonian established the
Smithsonian Latino Center to develop exhibitions and public programs based on Latino
and Latin American themes and objects; but it is not a museum with the commensurate
staff, budget and collections.
In May of 2011, the Commission issued its report to President Obama and various
committees of the Senate and House of Representatives that would have jurisdiction in
establishing the museum.
In essence the report stated 17 recommendations and findings that can be downloaded
from the Internet at this link:
http://www.americanlatinomuseum.gov/pdf/NMAL%20FINAL-Report.pdf
In summary the report said:
“The Commission has determined there is a need for a new national
museum in Washington, DC that is devoted to the preservation,
presentation, and interpretation of American Latino art, cultural
expressions, and experiences; a museum that ‘illuminates the American
story for the benefit of all.’
The Commission, in recommending that the nation move forward with the
goal of establishing a new national museum, recognizes that it must
balance two vital priorities: not contributing to any new federal expenditure
in the short term, while clearly moving forward with a national museum
that integrates the Latino experience into the American narrative.”
While the report has been widely viewed and discussed and its Facebook page has
127,000 followers, it is only Congress that can pass a law to establish the museum.

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I am pleased to report that legislation authorizing the Smithsonian Institution to establish
the museum and designating the Arts & Industry Building on the National Mall to house
the museum was introduced for the second time in March (2013) in both the Senate
(S.568) and House of Representatives (H.R. 1217). The legislation was co-sponsored by
Republican and Democratic representatives and is now awaiting hearings.
As I consider the original title of this paper, can a museum end a deep-seated rivalry the
answer appears to me to be linked with a long-term philosophical perspective: healing a
rift can only begin when there is acceptance. If the supreme legislative body of a nation
and its President agree on establishing the American Latino Museum, it seems to me
that there is then a consensus for moving forward along a path that would yield a
transcultural view of American History. It would signal the turning point away from a
single, dominant view of how the nation came to be and accept a dialogue between the
various parties that have always been visible to each other but not acknowledged.
Until such time as the museum is legislatively mandated, the long process of healing the
rift between the English and the Spanish will not begin. So yes, a museum can heal a
rivalry if that museum is dedicated to ‘illuminate the American story for the benefit of all.’
Does healing occur overnight? No, this will be a generational process that will only take
place as more elements within the larger society (artists and educators, journalists,
universities and the media) can engage in a conversation about the meaning of being
an American citizen. This effort will require the acceptance and integration of eleven
million souls who are currently marginalized as undocumented persons in our society
because, although not all are Hispanic, the vast majority is. And the nation has to
embrace the generation of young people who were raised and educated as Americans,
but do not have citizenship, ‘Dreamers,’ as they have became known.
Building a museum on the National Mall is a long process, insofar as the National
Museum of History and African-American Culture took twelve years to have its
legislation approved and more years to build, opening its doors in 2016.
With the help of virtual content, the Smithsonian Museum of the American Latino could
begin its programming sooner, but its construction will take a long time. I for one cannot
wait for that to happen.