Actor John Leguizamo, who is of Colombian and Puerto Rican descent, has been living in the U.S. since age 4. At one point, he recalls having figured out what was missing in high school history classes and textbooks: Latinos. “We’re not taught anything that we contributed to this country and we’ve been around for 500 years,” he told HuffPost Live. “It was like, I’m watching TV and I’m watching movies and listening to radio and we’re invisible,” Leguizamo insisted. “I was like, where are all the Latin people?”
After the realization, the actor thought up “Latin History for Dummies,” except the name couldn’t go through because of the “For Dummies” instructional book series representatives, but the idea was still there, and after thinking it through for the last 15 years, the show “Latin History for Morons,” is all set to go!
The play is a one-man show, set to be told in the form of a satirical history lesson for Leguizamo’s son, where he will touch on how Spanish-speaking immigrants helped to shape the U.S. “Hopefully their minds are going to be rebooted and reset to realizing what a huge impact we Latin people have had in this country,” the actor told Fox News Latino, “and how all our contributions have been erased systematically.”
Leguizamo’s concern was also heightened when he read a statistic that said 45 percent of Latino kids drop out of high school. “Just imagine, you’re a white kid and all of a sudden everybody’s Latin and everything they’re teaching you is Latin and you don’t hear anything about yourself or about your contributions,” the actor said. “You feel like an invisible person screaming in the woods and nobody hears you,” he added. “And it’s really weird and unfair because we had huge contributions.”
The show debuts tonight at California’s La Jolla Playhouse and is slated to debut in New York City's Public Theater next Spring 2017.
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