HOLLYWOOD’S DIRTY SECRET IS OUT: A star-studded list of over 100 Latino artists, including Eva Longoria and John Leguizamo, have UNLEASHED a SCATHING open letter that EXPOSES the industry’s SYSTEMIC ERASURE of an ENTIRE people. This isn’t just about one role—it’s about a century of DELIBERATE EXCLUSION and the SHAMEFUL truth that Hollywood’s most powerful studios would rather ERASE Latinos than let them tell their own stories.
The flashpoint is A24’s film “Deep Cuts,” where non-Latina Odessa A’zion was handed the role of Zoe Gutierrez—a half-Mexican, half-Jewish lesbian—in a move insiders call TYPICAL and PREDATORY. A’zion’s subsequent withdrawal after public outrage is a mere Band-Aid on a GUSHING WOUND. The REAL scandal, as revealed by star Xochitl Gomez, is that the role NEVER EVEN HIT THE CASTING GRID for Latina actresses. It was a DONE DEAL, orchestrated by executives who believe Latino stories are for anyone BUT Latinos.
The numbers are a DAMNING INDICTMENT: Latinos, nearly 20% of the U.S. population, bagged a MEASLY 1% of leading film roles last year. On television, they are largely INVISIBLE or grotesquely stereotyped, with one in four characters portrayed as CRIMINALS. This isn’t an accident; it’s a BUSINESS MODEL built on cultural appropriation and whitewashing.
The letter is a DECLARATION OF WAR against the greenlight rooms and boardrooms where these decisions are made in the dark. It demands Latino executives, authentic casting, and creative control FROM THE START. But this is a fight against a century of ingrained prejudice, where legends like Marlon Brando and Al Pacino were celebrated for playing brownface caricatures. Hollywood has been “kind” to Mexicans only when forced, and now the bill for a hundred years of exclusion has come due.
The studio gates are creaking under the weight of a suppressed truth: the entire American narrative has been built on the stories of a people it has systematically tried to silence. What does it say about a nation when its dream factory refuses to see a FIFTH of its own population?
Author: Kayitsi.com
