Felix Sanchez remembers too well how it all began. He had been working on the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign, hiring actors to mobilize Latino voters across the country. That was back in 1988 when, as a lawyer, Sanchez got his first taste of the entertainment world. He would later partake in Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, working with Latino talent once again. But that time something changed.

Actors Jimmy Smits and Esai Morales, key actors who supported Bill Clinton, later joined forces with Sanchez to co-create – along with Sonia Braga and Merel Julia – the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA) in 1997. Their shared goal in establishing the Foundation was to help increase access to the media, telecommunications, and entertainment industries for Hispanic artists and new Hispanic talent. After all, NHFA chairman and co-founder Sanchez had seen all too often how Latinos failed to make up their share of the entertainment and media industries despite the fact that, today, they make up more than 18% of the total U.S. population.

Advocating For Industry Change

The NHFA opened its doors in Washington, D.C., with the goal to offer scholarships, outreach and adjunct programs to Hispanic students pursuing graduate degrees in the arts. Since then, more than 500 Hispanic students have received in total more than five million dollars in support. In relationship to media and entertainment businesses, NHFA has also helped with diversity promotion, groundbreaking studies, and graduate school scholarships for students at the following eight universities: UCLA, USC, UT Austin, Northwestern, NYU, Columbia, Harvard and Yale. In addition, it has focused on talent and content development, promoting civil rights in the digital age, and monitoring the media.

“One of the reasons we established ourselves in Washington is because we needed the political world to pressure the media and entertainment industry to correct itself. We can show them the numbers of our underrepresentation in films. We’ve never gone above 5%. TV is better, but the roles we play are not nominated for an Emmy,” said Sanchez. “Latinos and African Americans make up 49% of the film box office. We [Hispanics] alone make up 25% of the box office. We over-index for showing up at the movie theaters, yet the Latino community doesn’t ask for anything. Other communities would boycott films without adequate representation, but we accept this.”

A New Era Of Representation

For Sanchez, fair representation in the entertainment industry isn’t limited to films, though. NHFA has fought on behalf of adequate representation of Latinos in the entertainment industry across the board.  With enough push and media attention, the organization helped pave the way for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to begin honoring more Latino performers beyond the mere two (Placido Domingo, who was from Spain, and Chita Rivera) it had recognized in its almost 40 years of doing so.

“That ushered in a brand-new era in which Latinos were honored like Linda Ronstadt, Carlos Santana, and Lin-Manuel Miranda,” he said.   Actor and singer Rita Moreno and opera singer Martina Arroyo were also recognized.

“It took speaking truth to power,” added Sanchez, who witnessed back then, in 2012, a change of guard in the program’s producer from one had behaved defiantly toward him with no interest in honoring more Latinos to a new producer who cared.  “It was time to turn the page and open the door.”

NHFA’s impact on the Kennedy Center was just the beginning. The organization also fought for greater representation of Latinos – and especially Latinas – on Saturday Night Live, which had only had two Latinos in a 40-year period. “There was no way they could justify that in 40-some years they had never hired a Latina cast member,” said Sanchez. “We pounded Lorne Michaels, the producer of SNL, in the media. They couldn’t justify their actions.”

Sure enough, NHFA was able to force the issue, and Melissa Villaseñor became SNL’s first Latina cast member in 2016. “Both of those times were David and Goliath moments,” said Sanchez.

Scholarships, Outreach And More

While NHFA has worked tirelessly to open doors for Latinos to more fully partake in the entertainment industry, it has also provided Latinos with opportunities to participate in other ways. It has helped ensure diversity on Sunday morning public affairs TV talk shows; developed apprenticeship programs; created partnerships to promote talented Latinos in front of and behind the cameras; developed writing, directing, casting, production and outreach programs with Disney and ABC television group; established the Fox Writers Intensive and the CBS Diversity Institute (writers mentoring/fellowships, directing, talent showcase, daytime writers initiative, daytime casting initiative, and actor workshops); and created NBC’s Diversity Initiative for Writers.

Beyond creating scholarships and opportunities for Latinos in the entertainment industry, another important area of advocacy for BHFA is in changing the way Latinos are portrayed in the media. “The portrayal of Latinos has often put us in the margins,” said NHFA’s chairman and co-founder. “That is why the way Latinos are portrayed is a civil rights issue in this digital age.”

Incremental Change

Sanchez has seen Latinos have their high moments in history, yet, at the same time, in the past and still today, those high moments have been followed by returning to the margins of society. He recalled back in 1987, when the movie “La Bamba” was a worldwide hit, and yet afterwards the only focus on Latinos in films was with “Selena” in 1997. Then, in 1999, Ricky Martin sang at the Grammy Awards. “This was really groundbreaking. It was an earthquake when he performed,” said the chairman. Most recently, when Jennifer Lopez and Shakira performed in the half-time show for the Superbowl, it was, for him, another “earthquake moment.”

“In their own way, they used art to pierce the bubble of mainstream society to say we are here, and we are at the table, whether you want to believe it or not. When you have been so marginalized, these movements help galvanize a community,” said Sanchez. “We have seen incremental growth and then it’s been static at the same time.”

The chairman and co-director reflected on how slow, at times, a growth in Latino representation in the industry has truly been. For example, Jaime Camil, who plays the leading actor in the CBS comedy series “Broke” is now only the second leading Latino male actor in a CBS TV comedy series since Desi Arnaz in “I Love Lucy” in 1951.

Making Headway

Of course, there’s good news too. When it comes to the music industry, Latino music has moved beyond being its own genre. As Sanchez pointed out, “Latino music has permeated mainstream music. You cannot go to a gym or yoga class or anywhere without Latino music blaring from the speakers. We have certainly made headway here.”

And, when it comes to movies, Netflix recently committed to airing 50 shows from Mexico here in the U.S. This is good news, however, Sanchez wonders why there’s still little Latino-content driven shows that focus on U.S Latinos.

All of this gives further reason for NHFA to continue to do the work it’s been doing and to push for greater representation and more honest and real perceptions of the Latino community in the media and entertainment industries.

While life’s been on hold in the past months due to the COVID-19 world epidemic, NHFA’s work is far from over. When we interviewed with Sanchez, the organization was in the middle of launching “InformaGente,” a conversation series with California’s Governor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services and LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens). In this continuous series, with an expected launch date of May 10, NHFA facilitates celebrities interviewing experts about the facts and news of the day related to COVID-19 and other critical issues facing California (the series will be archived at: https://www.listoscalifornia.org/).

Also, back in April, ABC had an online casting workshop and NHFA had sent three Latino student representatives to be in the workshop. In being part of the ABC Casting Workshop, they would automatically be considered for the ABC Talent Showcase although not automatically selected for it.

If selected for the showcase, NHFA’s students would partake in a rigorous audition and rehearsal process in which ABC casting executives work with the actors to put on a one-night live performance, industry-only event attended by producers, agents, casting directors and entertainment executives. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, this event was rescheduled for this fall.

A Fight Far From Over

As the world attempts to return to some semblance of “normal,” NHFA remains fighting on behalf of Latinos in the media and entertainment industries. But, maybe, the only good news of these strange times is that that “there are so many streaming industries competing for eyeballs,” remarked Sanchez. “If they really want to expand their business model, they will have to satisfy the viewing needs of the Latino community.” •

Follow Michelle Adam on Twitter @MichelleAdam5. Also, contact Michelle at writeaway@hotmail.com and visit her at her blog michadam.wordpress.com and her website www.michelleadam.net