When Jorge Zamanillo started working as a collection curator in the HistoryMiami Museum in 2000, he found an old leather wallet on his desk. In tracking down its owner, Zamanillo found a story of how a Cuban man made his way to the United States.
“When he opened the wallet, he started crying immediately,” Zamanillo said.
The wallet owner, Yuri Cardente Hernandez, recognized the photo of a young girl inside.
“That was his daughter he had left behind in Cuba when he fled on this boat to the United States,” Zamanillo said.
Cardente Hernandez told him about how he and his friends built the boat in Cuba using smuggled bolts and parts. He said they escaped in the middle of the night and despite the boat breaking down twice, they made it to Florida.
“It's just an example of how you can have one little thing sitting on your desk, and you don’t even know the connection it can make,” Zamanillo said.
Now the founding director of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of the American Latino, Zamanillo is visiting Latino neighborhoods across Connecticut to find what stories are waiting to be shared.
First stop: Hartford
Zamanillo kicked off talks in Hartford with a presentation at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History on May 7. He said he’s looking for the public’s help in answering a question that’s at the heart of the museum.
“What's your experience as an American?” Zamanillo said, “Latino history is part of the larger American history narrative. So, how does that fit in with your community?”
According to Zamanillo, it’ll take about 10 to 12 years to build the museum. That’s because it’s a national museum, he said, representing over 60 million Latinos.
To represent communities like Hartford’s North End and other underrepresented neighborhoods, Zamanillo said he and his team have to spread the word.
Zamanillo said they are visiting communities across the country for coffee chats.
“Rural areas, big cities, small towns, and having town hall meetings,” he said. “We call them cafecitos [that] we have with community leaders.”
The Connecticut Museum of Culture and History was his first stop in Connecticut. Zamanillo said an education team will return to Connecticut to keep having community meetings and expanding their reach.
The idea is to first record oral histories from community members and, eventually, to collect historical items. To get there, though, Zamanillo said people have to be in the know.
“We have to build this awareness campaign across the country to let people know what we're doing,” Zamanillo said, “and build a national collection that represents Latinos across the U.S.”
The American Latino identity
Congress passed legislation for the National Museum of the American Latino to be built in 2020, but the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget brought its funding into question.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the FY26 budget proposal would fund an exhibition model in other museums, rather than a new museum on the National Mall.
This came after President Trump issued an executive order in March of last year calling on the Smithsonian to restore itself to its “rightful place”, away from a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
Zamanillo said he recognizes that some people believe there should be one museum telling all stories.
Mike Gonzalez is one such person. He wrote an opinion piece that was later published with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank known for the policy blueprint Project 2025, saying he believes a Latino museum would be a “woke abomination” that would have part of American history “segregated off.”
Zamanillo disagrees.
"It's really telling American history through a lens of Latino history,” he said.
According to Zamanillo, the museum is fully funded with strong congressional support. The museum has created an advisory board of trustees, he said, and they are now in the process of selecting a building site on the National Mall.
In the meantime, they will continue the exhibition model. The ¡Puro Ritmo! exhibition has been recently opened to the public online and at the Molina Family Latino Gallery in the National Museum of American History.
But an exhibition, Zamanillo said, is not enough.
“In order to bring light to stories that are important, we have to highlight them. We have to make sure they're told fully,” Zamanillo said. “There's no way you could do that in one gallery. We need a whole museum to do that.”
The museum also needs community support, Zamanillo said. He encourages Latinos in Connecticut to engage with local groups and share oral histories, so they’re ready to be told at the next “cafecito” or community coffee chat.
“We're all in this together, creating and forging this new identity here in the United States,” Zamanillo said. “That's what this museum is about, creating that identity.”
Learn more
To follow the step-by-step process of the museum’s creation, visit latino.si.edu. The website also includes online exhibitions and additional information.
