As the ongoing battles in state legislatures over classroom curricula indicate, history–which stories to teach, and from which perspectives–might be subjective.

So too is Hollywood’s rich tradition of biopics, which reflect whose lives are worthy of immortalizing on film.

Whether in textbooks or onscreen, most of the protagonists of our shared cultural history have belonged to the same demographic: Elvis, Oppenheimer, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Hughes.

Hollywood has also devoted resources to spotlighting relatively lesser-known white men, such as Jordan Belfort, Frank Abagnale and Hugh Glass.

 

Biopics about people of color exist when it comes to icons like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali

One community–the second largest racial group in the country–has been underrepresented when it comes to history as told by Hollywood.

However, this year is an exception. Flamin’ Hot, A Million Miles Away, Cassandro and Radical are diverse in genre, theme and tone, but they are all movies based on true stories of Latino men (of Mexican descent).

“These films mean our true stories are finally being told–our stories, not tropes,” says National Hispanic Media Coalition president and CEO Brenda Victoria Castillo. “And not just another film about Cesar Chavez. We have so many Latino legends in our history, and it’s time the world sees who we are, how diverse we are and what we’ve accomplished. We’re a part of the American narrative, and they’re finally hearing about us.”

In June, Searchlight released Flamin’ Hot, a comedy about  marketing executive Richard Montañez, who invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while he worked as a janitor at Frito-Lay. )In reality, Montañez’s claim to fame is in dispute).

Amazon has 2 movies during Hispanic Heritage Month: A Million Miles Away (Sept. 15), the inspirational story of José Hernández, who worked as a migrant farmworker as a child before eventually becoming an engineer and NASA astronaut, and Cassandro (which had its world premiere at Sundance ahead of Sept. 22 streaming release), a tale of sexuality, faith and family through the life of Saúl Armendáriz, whose lucha libre alter ego was pioneer of gay pride amid the macho wrestling scene.

Radical

Radical, which is based on the transformative work of schoolteacher Sergio Juárez Correa, is an entirely Mexican (not Mexican American) story, but due its star and producer Eugenio Derbez is expected to reach a crossover audience when it hits theaters in the U.S. and Mexico this fall, having already won the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance in January.

The effect of watching all 4 films in one week is to be immersed in another vision of North American culture and history, one in which Latinos are found in fields and factories as well as boardrooms, classrooms, laboratories and space shuttles and possess, as Juárez Correa (Derbez) puts it to his students, limitless potential. More importantly, the movies are mostly devoid of an outsider’s gaze, although some of Montañez (Jesse Garcia)’s quippy voiceovers feel like a put-on for the benefit of gringos.

“I think we’re used to seeing Latino and Mexican representation done in a way to please the American audience,” says A Million Miles Away director Alejandra Márquez Abella, migrant farmwork was one area she strove to depict authentically. “I was worried about portraying the fields as a horrible place, but I was also worried about making it like a romantic, pretty place that everyone enjoys, because that’s not the case either. It was a difficult balance to bring justice to those experiences.”

Márquez Abella, making her Hollywood directorial debut with this film, saves the inspirational feel-good vibes for Hernández’s remarkable personal trajectory. Under her careful direction, both migrant labor and the Hernández family’s upward mobility through the decades are depicted in a straightforward manner.

The effect of this culturally authentic representation is that the viewer is more easily able to tap into the emotional experiences of the characters without distraction of exoticization or otherization.

Films based on true stories could combat media stereotypes as well as public attitudes. “In media, migrant workers and immigrants more broadly are often reduced to their economic value or immigration statuses,” says Define American manager of entertainment partnerships and advocacy Dulce Valencia, who found in A Million Miles Away a depiction of immigrants as “human beings with hopes, fears, families, loves and dreams that are sometimes so big they go to space.”

Mexican society is very sexist and misogynistic and still very Catholic,” says Armendáriz, the subject of multiple documentary treatments, including 2018’s Cassandro, The Exotico! “I hope that with this film people will have the opportunity to know my true self.”

There have been Latino-centered biopics before–Stand and Deliver (1988), Selena (1997) and Frida (2002)–but they have until this year been few and far between. “When movies feature stories about Latinx people, they have historically been known to focus on trauma or on stereotypical themes involving drugs and crime. National news coverage doesn’t focus on how the majority of Latinxs living in the U.S. were born in the U.S. and how all Latinxs living in the U.S. contribute economically and culturally to the country,” says Ana-Christina Ramon.