Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) and the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Christensen) for providing me time to speak in favor of H.R. 2134, the National American Latino Heritage Museum Commission Act.
I am also grateful to the leadership and members of the House Committee on Resources and the Committee on House Administration for bringing this legislation to the floor today.
I first sponsored this legislation with my good friend, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, during Hispanic Heritage Month nearly three years ago. Since then, we have been hearing from many supporters, not just in the Latino community, but throughout the nation. The Senate version of this bill was sponsored by Senator Ken Salazar and Senator Mel Martinez.
We have a good, bipartisan group of co-sponsors, but I would like to emphasize that this is non-partisan legislation that will benefit all Americans. Our national museums have great influence over what Americans know and believe about our collective history and cultural life. When the children of America visit the capital to learn what our museums have to teach them, they go home believing that they have an understanding about what it means to be an American. H.R. 2134 would bring light to the issue of whether our national museums are doing all they can to provide future generations a more complete portrayal of American Latino contributions to American life, by showing that American Latinos are and always have been a part of the American experience.
The bipartisan Commission created by this bill (“Commission”) would be charged with examining and reporting to Congress and the President their recommendations on whether and how to establish a new museum dedicated to the art, history, and culture of the American Latino population of the United States. The Commission would be comprised of experts from the national art and museum communities as well as individuals with experience in administration and development of cultural institutions. Commissioners would be appointed in a bipartisan manner by the President and the leaders of the House and Senate.
Along with the question of whether a new museum is warranted, the Commission would examine such issues as the capacity for fundraising for a new museum, the availability of a collection to exhibit, whether a new museum should be part of the Smithsonian Institution or independent, the cost of establishing and maintaining a museum, and where a museum might be located in Washington, D.C. or its environs. Congress then may choose whether to act on the recommendations as it sees fit.
American Latinos will play an ever increasing role in the whole of our society. Americans of Latino heritage are a very youthful population and are projected to be more integral to the nation’s economy, workforce, and electorate. Almost half of American Latinos are under the age of 25. American Latinos have a higher proportion of preschool aged children among their population then any other group. Similarly, 11 percent of the Latino population is under the age of five. Among our nation’s school-age population, about every fifth student is Latino. In fact, the Census Bureau tells us that every fifth child born today in the United States is an American of Latino heritage.
Americans of Latino heritage have been part of American history since before the founding of the United States. They were present on the American continent for more than two centuries prior to the Declaration of Independence. Spanish colonists founded the first permanent settlement in the territorial United States in St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, four decades before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. The first church in North America was constructed by the Spanish in 1598 at San Juan Pueblo, 30 miles north of Santa Fe. One of the sixteen windows in the Colorado State Capitol depicts Casimiro Barela, a Hispano and former Governor and member of the state senate from 1876 to 1914, who was instrumental in the state’s decision to publish all laws in English, German and Spanish.
During the American Revolutionary War, General Washington’s army was successful at Yorktown in part because of support from a multi-ethnic army led by Spanish General Bernardo de Galvez on a southern front against the British, driving them out of the Gulf of Mexico, fighting them on the Mississippi and in Florida. The town of Galveston, Texas is named for him.