KPBS producer sheds light on Mexican-American histories
October 28, 1993
by Victor Payan
When Albuquerque-raised Paul Espinosa stepped onto the Brown University
campus in 1968, the leaves had not yet begun to turn color. The campus would have looked
much the same as it had to wide-eyed students who had passed through its halls over the
past two centuries. As one of less than a handful of Chicano students at the prestigious
Ivy League institution, he intended to major in math or engineering. The hundreds of
videotapes and numerous broadcasting awards that now line his office on the San Diego
State campus indicate that his career took a slightly different path.
Espinosa, a senior producer/writer/director at KPBS, has achieved
national recognition over the past decade for his documentaries on the Mexican-American
experience. His credits include seven Emmys and several national awards for programs such
as the mid-80s PBS Series "Fronteras" and documentaries ranging from "The
New Tijuana" which makes as its subject the sweeping changes underway in Tijuana and
"The Lemon Grove Incident," which deals with the first successful challenge to
in-school segregation in America. This case preceded Brown vs. the Board of Education by
nearly two decades yet failed to find its way into the history books.
It is his knack for documenting the undocumented and countering
stereotypes with fact that distinguishes Espinosa's work. In his award-winning "In
the Shadow of the Law," he introduces viewers to the members of a North County
migrant-worker camp and humanizes their plight against a hostile community.
His latest work, "The Hunt for Pancho Villa," deals with the
American military intrusion into Mexico to capture Pancho Villa following the leader's
raid on Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916. The documentary airs nationally as part of
"The American Experience" series on Wednesday, Nov. 3 at 9 p.m.; Thursday, Nov.
4 at 1 a.m.; then again on Thursday, Nov. 11 at 2p.m.
'Villa' frames the massive Punitive Expedition into Mexico to capture
the elusive general in a new perspective, calling on personal as well as official
histories to draw out the scope and significance of the mission.
The failed expedition, led by General John "Black Jack"
Pershing, lasted over 11 months and involved more than 10,000 soldiers, 8,000 horses and
hundreds of armored vehicles. It was the last major cavalry mission and the first use of
airplanes and armored vehicles in U.S. military history.
The documentary is concerned not only with the facts of the mission,
but also with the difference between the way in which the mission has worked its way into
history and what General Pershing himself refers to in a letter to his father-in-law as
"the real history."
Espinosa's concern for evaluating just who is writing the history here
weaves together a myriad of players from Pershing to President Woodrow Wilson and from
Villa to his arch rival Venustiano Carranza. Behind the political maneuvering and
diplomacy lie plans to seal off the entire border using 150,000 troops as well at
statements like, "we had gone in with the intentions of eating the Mexicans
raw."
"The Hunt for Pancho Villa" was co-produced by Hector Galan,
with whom Espinosa also worked on his previous project, "Los Mineros," about a
half-century labor struggle between a mining company and a community of Mexican-American
miners.
Espinosa's concern for the way in which history is handed down
developed during his years at Brown, in the late '60s, which he admits with a smile,
"was a very interesting time to be in college...it was a very exhilarating
time."
Brown University, in the cradle of the American history factory, was
steeped in and very informed of its traditions:
"George Washington slept in the University Hall," he says. At
the same tune, a new consciousness was arising, new George Washingtons were emerging and
different traditions were making themselves heard.
"The world was changing," he adds, "and we young
students were changing the world. We felt we were, and I think in retrospect we
were."
While a student, Espinosa recalls seeing Cesar Chavez speak at a rally
in Rhode Island. "I remember him as very charismatic," he says,
"soft-spoken, but he had a strong spiritual presence. It was a very emotional
experience."
Amidst the backdrop of turmoil, the Black Power Movement, the Grape
Boycott, the Chicano Moratorium, the Vietnam War, and his own culture shock at the
relative coldness of New Englanders, Espinosa earned a degree in anthropology.
Anthropology, too, was undergoing changes, and new crosscultural
perspectives and forms of analysis were coming into play. As an undergraduate, Espinosa
conducted independent field research in Guatemala. A three-month assignment after
graduation as the "resident futurist" for the Rhode Island Department of
Education turned into a one-year job, with Espinosa using his anthropology experience to
predict shifts in Rhode Island demographics for the coming decades.
In 1972, Espinosa returned to Latin America with another researcher.
"We drove from San Antonio, Texas to Peru," he says. It was during this journey
that Espinosa made a disturbing observation.
"One of the things that nearly made an impact on me was the
incredible profusion of American media in Latin America," he says, "both in
television and in film, what was then called cultural imperialism. On Peruvian television
you could be watching "Bonanza." Programs that had been on in America were now
all over Latin America."
Espinosa entered graduate school at Stanford University with a renewed
concern for the effects of media, in an individually-designed field called Culture and
Communication. Rather than turning his attention on third-world cultures, as most working
anthropologists were doing, Espinosa decided to test his ideas about cross-cultural
analysis on contemporary America and another tribe of "natives," television
executives.
"Anthropologists were used to studying 'powerless communities,'
where people couldn't really exclude them," he says. "and I was wanting to study
this powerful community, a television studio, where people weren't traditionally friendly
to the idea of having someone come in and observe them."
Fortunately, one studio, MTM, Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises, agreed to
his proposition and allowed Espinosa one year to observe the goings on of their new
program. "Lou Grant," a dramatic spin-off of the "Mary Tyler Moore
Show." This new socially concious show, ironically, dealt with issues confronting a
newspaper editor, a purveyor of American media.
This project awakened Espinosa's interest in television and its
potential to educate. It was then, with a new purpose as a filmmaker/historian, that he
came to work at KPBS in 1980. Putting his anthropological skills to work in San Diego was
a challenge, because of this young city's traditional ahistoricity. "In San
Diego," he jokes, "people want anything more than twenty-five years old to be
declared a landmark."
At the same time, the city's youth offered opportunities to have an
impact in writing the city's history.
"People call what I do revisionist history," he says.
"But how can it be revisionist if it hasn't been written before? When we were doing
"The Lemon Grove Incident," we wers doing primary research. So little
(Mexican-American) history was in history books in 1985, and this was not an isolated
case. There is a basic absence of this history."
After having worked in San Diego for more than a decade now and having
garnered national recognition for KPBS, Espinosa believes that though inroads have been
made, the history wars are far from over. Willful ignorance, distrust and fear still
prevail over fact, he believes. Also, the small number of people working on
Mexican-American history still allows much of the history to go unwritten and
unresearched.
"You get back to the idea of who writes the history." he
says, later adding,"we need a lot more people and support."
Undaunted, Espinosa continues to work from project to project. His
first feature film production, an adaptation of Tomás Rivera's "...and the earth did
not swallow him" is nearing completion. He then talks about the possibility of
collaborating on another project, a Chicano "Eyes on the Prize," and then...
There is still much history to write.