Edward James Olmos on Hollywoods View of Latino Actors

In the new drama Windows on the world, Edward James Olmos plays an undocumented smuggler working at the restaurant that was destroyed on September 11. The moving story of immigration, which debuted for free this week on the Latino-focused streaming site Vix, is just the latest turning point in a career steeped in history that includes an Oscar nomination for the Olmoss’ work in Stand and Deliver (1988), making it one of the few Latin American actors of American origin have ever been nominated for an Academy Award.

Speaking openly about the issue of representation in Hollywood, Olmos believes that the industry does not understand the distinct worldviews of Latinos born and raised in the United States compared to those in Latin America. Alone in quarantine in Los Angeles, Olmos watched excessively, read scripts and promoted the virtual version of the Los Angeles International Latin Film Festival. In two recent conversations, he spoke about the Hollywood treatment of Latin actors, telling the stories of undocumented immigrants and why his most successful business right now is teaching. Here are edited excerpts from our discussions.

In the history of the Oscars, only a handful of Latin American-born actors have been nominated or won. However, Latin American artists have been recognized more frequently. Why do you think this was the case?

For Latinos of American origin, this is an opportunity. They don’t put us in the stories. They don’t use us to play these roles. I thought Jennifer Lopez should have been nominated for [the 1997 biopic] Selena. It is one of his most stellar works. There have not been many occasions for us to truly deserve this kind of recognition. I have been very lucky. I didn’t think I would be nominated for Stand and Deliver, but I did. I understand today more than ever, 32 years later, what the power of this work was. It is one of the most viewed films in the United States due to its use in schools across America for the past 30 years.

Do you think the industry understands the difference between Latinos of American descent and people of Latin America?

Not at all, they should know, because many of them are also culturally from another place. They know very well that if they are Italians and that they were born here, they are different from Italians born in Italy. And if they are Jews living here, they are different from the Jews living in Israel. If you were born here, you are a completely unique individual. You will speak with the rhythms of your family’s dialect, wherever they come from, but it is different. Your thinking process is different.

Of all the labels used to identify people from our community, which one do you identify with?

Im Latino 100 percent. Im Chicano 100 percent. I am not afraid of these words. Many of my friends who are Cuban Latinos, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans do not want the word Latino to be used to designate them. They just want to be actors. We want to be known as American actors. It would be the right way, but it is not. And I knew it would never be in my lifetime. I knew that we must first be known as Latin Americans, and wear it very strongly and proudly, so that we can then no longer have to use it.

At Selena, where you played her father, Abraham Quintanilla, you give a poignant speech on this bicultural condition that really connects with many Mexican-Americans and Latinos. Growing up, did you feel like you existed between two cultures?

It was one of the biggest scenes I have ever had. People really appreciate it because it is a very strong truth. I will never forget when I started using the word Chicano, my father got angry. He comes from Mexico and he came here in 1945 legally and he married my mother, who was a Chicana. I was the first of his family born in the United States of America. We weren’t Mexican for Mexicans. We were American. We were from here, and yet when we came back across the border the guards said, You are Mexican.

Why did your father get mad at calling you Chicano?

The word is interesting because it is a term which for him was not conducive to the understanding of what we were. For him, we were Mexican-American. We were not Chicano. What the hell does that mean? said Hed. You are not a Chicano, you are Mexican-American. I said, “Well, when we go to Mexico, they don’t like us. When we come back, they don’t want us. None of them want us. So we are not American-Mexican, we are Chicano. It was around 1964 or 1965 when we started using it. Chicanism has struck hard. I love being Chicano. It’s a very stimulating word.

In Windows on the World, directed by your son Michael D. Olmos, you play as an undocumented father who survived September 11 but is caught in the immigration system.

It is a story that has never been told. It gives a voice to the people who died that day and who no one really took into consideration. This was not said because no one cared enough about the undocumented workers who worked in the twin towers. The film allowed us to take a look at what a family would do to survive and how love makes them resist incredible upheavals. One of the co-authors, Robert Anderson, read an article that said nothing about anyone who worked at Windows on the World restaurant. Curiosity seized him and he thought, “Wait a minute, the Latinos were probably in this restaurant. The investigation then began. To date, the names of the undocumented migrants who died on September 11 do not appear on the scrolls commemorating the deceased.

One way that you and your team at the Latino Film Institute are changing the story around Latinos in entertainment is the Youth Cinema Project, which gives children in marginalized communities access to the industry in an educational setting.

It makes a difference when you offer this opportunity to young minds of color, not just Latinos. This is how the change could really be extended. During this quarantine, I worked a lot with the Youth Cinema Project. Due to the situation, our students were not able to finish their projects, so we get the scripts they wrote and great young Latin actors from several TV shows do it a live reading of them online[[[[available on YouTube]. Our young writers, aged 8 to 12, present the actors and their stories come to life.