Matt Ortega

Legislation for the erection of a national Latino museum advanced through Congress this past week as part of public lands bill.

The legislation, which the White House is expected to approve, creates a 23-member panel to study the viability of a National Museum of the American Latino Community in Washington. Proponents hope the museum will rise above the din of the illegal immigration debate to highlight the contributions to U.S. society by the 45 million-strong Hispanic community.

The bill is not without opposition from the anti-immigrant right and construction will be necessary to house the exhibit in the near-packed Smithsonian.

The museum is not without strong support from Congressional Democrats:

California Democrat Rep. Xavier Becerra, who has been pushing for the commission since 2003, said the Smithsonian museum complex struck him as “phenomenal” when he first visited it as a newly minted lawyer in the mid-1980s.

But it presented “an incomplete picture of what it means to be an American.”

“This is not an issue of trying to portray one type of American or another,” he said. “It’s to try and give everyone a better sense of what it’s like to be an American.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The views expressed are of the author, and the author alone, and do not reflect the views of the Democratic National Committee.