FIRST ON FOX: The growing controversy over the Smithsonian Institution’s planned Latino Museum has come to a head with a group of over a dozen conservative Latinos who wrote to Congress reiterating their calls to defund the museum, which they say promotes a "leftist ideological narrative."
"This museum in no way celebrates the culture and overall contributions of Americans of Hispanic origin," Alfonso Aguilar, the President of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, told Fox News Digital. "It actually presents a totally distorted portrayal of Hispanics in the US in order to advance an extreme leftist ideology."
"I recognize that there have been some ugly chapters in our history, and we should talk about them, but you can’t reduce the entire narrative about Hispanics to those experiences," Aguilar said.
In a letter sent to Rep. Kay Granger, Chairwoman of the House Committee on Appropriations, and Rep. Tom Cole, Vice Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, a group of 23 Hispanic leaders and activists called upon Congress to stop all funding for the Smithsonian's Latino Museum.
Granger and Cole did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
SMITHSONIAN SUSPENDS LATINO EXHIBIT AFTER CRITICS CALL PREVIOUS VERSION ‘DISGRACEFUL’, ‘MARXIST’
The group said the Latino Museum's first-ever exhibit at the National Museum of American History, "Presente! A Latino History of the United States," first sparked controversy at it's opening exhibit in June 2022 after Gonzalez, Aguilar and Joshua Treviño wrote an opinion piece in The Hill denouncing the exhibit for its "Marxist narrative" of the experiences of Hispanics in America.
The group said it "offers an unabashedly Marxist portrayal of history, religion and economics" which reduces "the identity and history of Hispanics in the U.S. to a ‘struggle for justice,’" which centered around "leftist ideology."
"This museum seeks to consign Americans from Latin America with origins in Cuba or Venezuela or Mexico or Central America or Chile into a permanent victimhood status," Mike Gonzalez, a Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. "Rather than promote success narratives and the ethics, values and practices that lead to self-help, self-governance and success it points in exactly the opposite direction."
"If you care about Americans whose origin lies in Spain or Mexico or the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, you do not want this message to become pervasive," Gonzalez added.
SMITHSONIAN'S PLANNED LATINO MUSEUM IS WOKE MOVE DESIGNED TO RADICALIZE US HISPANICS
In the letter to Granger and Cole, the Hispanic activists and leaders say that the Latino Museum is "controlled by leftist professors and activists" and has been "set up as a forum" to promote "a culturally Marxist take" of the Hispanic experience in the U.S.
"They [leftists] see the museum as one of the areas that perpetrate ‘white supremacy’ and they want to use it just like they used schools and libraries," Gonzalez said.
The twenty-three signatures said that Hispanics do not want a "distorted representation" of their history and called on Congress to completely defund their plans for a Latino museum in Washington D.C.
"I'd rather have no museum, than have one that insults Hispanics in this way," Aguilar said. "Hispanics don't want a ‘LatinX’ museum."
The Smithsonian's Latino Museum did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
