Why Hollywood Can't Put Real-Life Mexicans on TV Gustavo Arellano - OC Weekly
go to original May 31, 2016

Bordertown | Shameful from "Viva Coyote" (Animation Domination)

Last Sunday saw the bittersweet culmination of a dream I dropped 15 years ago, a dream I now want more than ever before. The occasion was the season finale of Bordertown, a FOX cartoon that satirized life on the U.S.-Mexico border and for which I served as a consulting producer. It was a historic series, the first cartoon starring Latinos on prime time. And the conclusion to Season 1, titled "Viva Coyote," was my first writing credit and helped me get my Writer's Guild of America (WGA), West membership - yay!

But I held no viewing party, had no friends and family over to mark the achievement. It was also the series finale for Bordertown, as FOX had announced its cancellation two weeks earlier. We just never got the ratings or critical buzz to justify a second season for executives. And that same week, all the networks and many cable, web and streaming outlets began announcing their new shows for the fall season - and only one will focus on Latinos (a Netflix-Univisión drama about El Chapo - surprise, surprise). With Bordertown's axing and a similar fate befalling the Eva Longoria-starring NBC laugher Telenovela, that leaves just one English-language, Latino-centered show - the CW's Jane the Virgin - on network television, one on cable (Lopez, George Lopez's latest roman à clef), none on Amazon Prime (Mozart In the Jungle, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, doesn't really count), one on Hulu (East Los High), Narcos on Netflix . . . and that's it.

This, during the supposed Golden Age of Television. In a country in which Latinos are now the largest minority. In a year in which politicians are defaming Mexicans nonstop. In an industry based in Southern California, which reverted to Mexico in 1995. As we say in Spanish - and someone get a translator for the writers' room, won't ya? - ¿que pinche chingada?

...I now know exactly why Mexicans remain side characters at best on networks or cable, why Latino writers rarely get the chance to run their own shows, and why it's going to be like that for a while - and my moment of clarity came because of the word pocho.

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