We [Latinos] have contributed so much and yet our stories aren’t being told, and when they are told they do what they did in Argo. Nobody even knew that Tony Méndez was a Mexican-American from El Paso, it was so subtly played that there was no cultural dynamic in the character whatsoever. And you might say, "Well, I studied Tony, there was no flag waving, there was no taco eating, there was none of that kind of stuff, he’s totally All-American", and I said, "Yeah, but you look at him, you look at that man and he looks 1,000% like a Mexican-American. He looks very, very Latino, he looks more Latino than I do". At the same time you say, "Well, Ben Affleck had to play the role because he wouldn’t have made the movie without playing that role", and I said, "Okay, that’s great, well then Ben Affleck has a responsibility to play a Latino. So play a Latino, Ben Affleck.
"You know? Get with it, get with the program. Stop being Ben Affleck playing Ben Affleck, the Tony Méndez character of this great story. Be an actor, really get yourself together and move forward on that level. And that movie won Best Picture of the year so look what happens. It’s ridiculous. We have a long way to go."
Read what else Academy Award-nominated actor, director and producer Edward James Olmos, shown at right, had to say about the images of Latinos in the media and the new movie, Go For Sisters (written and directed by John Sayles and starring Olmos, LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross and Harold Perrineau), by reading the Carolina Moreno blog in The Huffington Post by clicking here.