Latino TV: A History by Mary Beltrán (review)

Abstract

Mary Beltrán’s Latino TV: A History shows the slow but incremental growth of Latina/o participation and representation in US English-language television.1 While a handful of scholars have studied Latinx representation and participation on US television, Latino TV provides the fi rst-ever account of Latina/o televisual productions and authorship since the 1950s. Throughout the book’s six chapters, Beltrán combines archival research, dozens of interviews with TV professionals, and textual analysis of television programs to examine the histories of Latina/o television narratives and creative professionals across broadcast, cable, and digital television. This emphasis—on “how television narratives and their production dynamics behind the scenes constructed Latina/os and Latinidad for US audiences”2—makes Latino TV an essential read for the growing community of scholars interested in Latinx representation and authorship, as well as scholars of television and new media. Latino TV makes a crucial intervention in theorizations of television as a cultural forum, a concept popularized by Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch.3 Rather than accept Newcomb and Hirsch’s argument, Beltrán brilliantly argues that television is “a cacophonous theater of competing story worlds and visions of the nation.”4 She outlines how the TV industry has his-