A bill seeking to establish a long-awaited National Museum of the American Latino has made significant progress in the legislature, as a Senate committee advanced the proposed legislation on Thursday.
What We Know:
- The committee voted unanimously to send the full version of the House bill to the full Senate, giving the museum proposal an opportunity to be voted on and hopefully passed on to the President’s desk for signature. A co-sponsor of the bipartisan bill is Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who the highest ranking Latino in Congress.
- According to NBC News, out of the 19 museums operated by the Smithsonian, none of them focus on the culture and contributions of Latinos in the U.S. The last of its museums to open was The National Museum of African American History and Culture, established by Congress in 2003 and open to the public in 2016. A 1994 report, issued by a 15-member task force appointed, concluded that the Smithsonian Institution “displays a pattern of willful neglect toward the estimated 25 million Latinos in the United States”.
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The bill that was advanced includes language that calls for diversity of political views in the museum’s presentation of Latino culture and experience in the US. “The purpose of the museum is in part to reflect the diversity of the Latino population—Latinos are not monolithic,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), when addressing this part of the legislation.
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On an NBC News panel that aired on Thursday, Sen. Menendez expressed that his “only hope is that that leg of the journey can culminate successfully before the end of this year”. Estuardo Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Friends of the American Latino Museum who also participated in the panel, said “it can be done quickly, and based on the level of bipartisan support, we’re confident it can happen”.
The U.S. is home to about 60 million Latinos, 18.5 percent of the U.S. population. They are the second largest ethnic minority group in the country.
