Latino Actors Weren’t Snubbed At The Oscars — But That’s Not A Good Thing

It’s been 14 years since a U.S. Latino actor last took home an Academy Award. No one knows when that will happen again, but it certainly won’t be this Sunday.

After the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced its all-white slate of nominees for the acting categories in January, Twitter users expressed their discontent with hashtags like #OscarsSoWhite. Their focus was mostly on the film “Selma,” whose cast and director were all passed over for nominations. Few people brought up the issue of snubbed Latino actors.

That’s probably because, according to statistics and Latino advocates, the real issue for Latinos isn’t a lack of nominations but a lack of roles in the first place.

“The problem is there are [few] roles that are available to Latino actors, and they are generally not central to the narrative,” Felix Sanchez, co-founder and chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, told The Huffington Post. “They are a pivot point for the main storyline. That’s the case in ‘Boyhood’ and that happens repeatedly in films. So we’re left to create our own independent films, which do not really get the audience. And often the money is not there to really produce a film that will win awards.”

An overview of the history of Latino actors at the Academy Awards is revealing. When you include international Latin American and Spanish stars in the tally, Latinos have won an Oscar 9 times out of a total of 29 nominations. Only one Latino has ever won the Best Actor award — José Ferrer, for 1950’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” — and no Latina has ever been named Best Actress.

The academy has received plenty of criticism over its lack of diversity, particularly after the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012 that academy voters were 94 percent white, 2 percent black and less than 2 percent Latino.

When controversy concerning diversity resurfaced this year, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the academy’s president, spoke up.

“We are committed to do our part to ensure diversity in the industry,” Boone Isaacs, who became organization’s first black president in 2013, told The New York Times in January. “We are making great strides, and I personally wish it was moving quicker, but I think the commitment is there and we will continue to make progress.”

“I think one thing that is evident from the success of that movie is that the Latino audience, just like any other audience, responds to authenticity,” Allen told HuffPost.

Lately, he said, larger studios seem to have started getting the message.

“I think there is a better understanding of the authenticity that the Latino audience wants to see, as opposed to cliche and caricature,” said Allen, noting also the success of television series like The CW’s “Jane the Virgin.”

In addition to Pantelion’s films, 20th Century Fox recently released “The Book of Life,” an animated feature based on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, and Disney just released “McFarland USA,” which stars Kevin Costner and focuses on the uplifting true story of an all-Latino cross-country team in California.

Sanchez told HuffPost that studio executives who ignore the demographic realities do so at their own peril.

“Look, there’s a demographic shift,” he said. “Either you plan for it or somebody else will.”

The Huffington Post