(Tanya Saracho, Melissa Barrera and Mishel Prada of "Vida" speak during the Starz segment of the 2020 Winter TCA Press Tour. (Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images))
A few hundred Latinx entertainment creatives said a systemic shift in Hollywood is overdue and calls for prioritizing those at the intersections of a Black and Indigenous Latinx identity.
More than 270 show creators, TV showrunners and writers sent an open letter to entertainment executives stressing the need for further inclusion in the industry.
“Our stories are important, and our erasure onscreen contributes to the persistent prejudice that prevents real change in this country. This prejudice is not as overt as the one that keeps immigrant children in cages and separates families at the border, or as violent as the racism that is killing our Black, Brown and Indigenous community members at the hands of police. But when we are onscreen, we’re often relegated to stereotypes or villains,” according to the letter published in Variety.
The letter details five demands:
- Green lighting projects by Latinx writers and producers.
- Diversifying the content of what projects are greenlit in order to represent the Latinx experience as more than a monolith.
- Advancing Latinx writers beyond “diversity hires.”
- Hiring Latinx writers for more than just Latinx stories.
- Not telling stories about the Latinx experience without Latinx voice.
“While Latinx are 18.3% of the U.S. population, we only make up 4.7% of feature writers and 8.7% of TV writers. As Latinx writers move up to showrunner level, the stats only get more dismal. By refusing to tell our stories AND by refusing to put us in charge of telling them — Hollywood power brokers are complicit in our exclusion,” the letter states.