The controversy over the exclusion of the Latino experience from Ken Burns’s recent documentary The War raised important questions not only about how he and PBS view Latinos, but more generally about Latino and Latin American images in the media. At first PBS and Burns maintained that it was too late to make any changes in the film, but after the Latino community mobilized on this issue, they changed their position, agreeing to make last-minute marginal changes. In the process, both acknowledged the importance of the Latino market and the problem of their blind-sightedness toward this community.

This was all especially interesting because this was not a battle against a major corporate entity (PBS tries hard to come off as corporate, but its mission as a government-chartered entity is still to serve the public interest) or the Republican right wing, but against what are generally viewed as very liberal actors. Burns’s track record on the role of race in such documentaries as Baseball and Jazz, among others, has certainly been progressive. So what are we to make of the “blind spot” he seemed to have when it came to Latinos? Does this qualify him as a racist, or is there something else going on?

With the Latino population now totaling about 48 million (including the 4 million residents of Puerto Rico) and making up half of the country’s population growth, the anti-immigrant sentiment in the country has become a major wedge issue in the current presidential election. Despite 60% of Latinos being U.S.-born, Latinos are being characterized in this debate as foreigners invading this country, not wanting to learn English and undermining U.S. institutions and practices. The overall exclusion of the Latino experience from Burns’s World War II saga has some very tangible and negative consequences: By erasing Latinos from our role in U.S. history and reinforcing the incorrect notion that Latinos have contributed nothing to this country, Burns was, in fact, fueling anti-immigrant and anti-Latino (and, by default, anti–Latin American) sentiment by omission.

While at one point during this controversy, it appeared as if PBS and Burns understood what the Latino advocates were saying and acknowledged the broad-based outrage generated in the Latino community, this quickly changed once the news hit the major media that they had agreed to make changes in the documentary. That’s when the Burns public relations machine took over.

Eschewing direct dialogue, Burns decided to conduct it through the media. Here are some of the highlights:

During an April 17 meeting with Latino community leaders, including members of Congress, PBS and Burns agreed to change the documentary to “seamlessly” include the Latino experience in the film. The following day, articles appeared in The Washington Post and other papers that Burns was in fact not going to reedit his film. In his public statements, Burns tried the minimize the importance of his documentary by describing it as more subjective than his previous work; it was not, he said, the “definitive” account of World War II. Latino advocates felt that regardless of this characterization, the seven-part series, together with the accompanying books and DVDs, all supported by a $10 million marketing budget, would nonetheless be seen as definitive .

Burns consistently pointed out that when he recruited veterans to interview, “no Hispanics came forward.” But he never explained how he reached out to the Latino community, instead implying that Latino vets were uninterested. During the controversy, Latino vets’ interest in participating became more than evident, as did the fact that Burns didn’t reach out. He kept explaining that his film was not organized around specific groups, that it was more universal. Yet in his proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities, he explained that The War would look at the diversity of the World War II experience, including those of African Americans and Japanese Americans. As is clear from this NEH proposal, Latinos were never on his radar. And contrary to his “universalist” statements, he always intended to look at specific groups in his documentary.

Opponents of the Latino demands for inclusion questioned where these types of demands for inclusion would end. Would now German Americans, Italian Americans, and every ethnic group want to be included in the film? This argument came out of fairly liberal circles. What this reaction revealed was a neglect for the legal recognition of Latinos as a “historically discriminated against” group, a “protected class” under U.S. civil rights law. Instead, Latinos were lumped in with white ethnic groups. Was this the result of ignorance of the Latino reality in this country, or does it represent a shift in thinking about racial-ethnic discrimination in the United States and the feeling that we are now in a “post–civil rights” era.

In the end, the so-called Latino war against The War raised many important issues. First, despite PBS and Burns’s position that the documentary couldn’t be changed to include Latinos, the unity of the Latino community on this issue demonstrated that change is possible. Second, this controversy has created a momentum for change within PBS in programming for and hiring of Latinos and other communities of color. Third, in the process of raising our criticisms about the exclusion of Latino contributions to World War II and defending U.S. democracy, hopefully the public was educated about the Latino and Latin America’s role in this country’s history.

Angelo Falcón, a political scientist, is President and Founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). He is also an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He can be reached at afalcon@latinopolicy.org.