Latinos pressure sponsors of movie

WASHINGTON – Latino advocacy organizations upset about filmmaker Ken Burns’ forthcoming PBS documentary on World War II have stepped up their campaign against the film, pressuring two corporate sponsors to remove their support.

Leaders of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, an umbrella organization of 14 groups, on Tuesday asked representatives of General Motors Corp. and Anheuser-Busch to disavow their sponsorship and remove their corporate logos from Burns’ “The War,” a 14-hour documentary scheduled to be shown on PBS stations in September.

“Our message was very simple,” said Manuel Mirabal, the association’s chairman. “They should not be associated with this documentary. If they plan to do so, to put it bluntly, they will not be held harmless.”

He added: “We should all be working to resolve this issue together. We understand that Ken Burns has his artistic principles, but in this case taxpayer dollars were used to make this film and it is flawed.”

The groups, including veterans’ organizations, have complained for months that the documentary includes no mention of Latino contributions to the American war effort.

The controversy began last fall when, after a screening of the film, Burns’ team acknowledged that Latinos were not represented in the documentary. The campaign against the film was initiated by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a University of Texas journalism professor who directs the U.S. Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project. PBS officials, Burns and the advocacy groups met last month in Washington without reaching a resolution.

PBS and Burns have said that they will add additional material to address the issue and that they have hired a Latino filmmaker to assist in producing it. But Burns and PBS have said repeatedly that the film itself is complete and that the new material will not be part of the stories detailed in the documentary.