Congress can direct the Smithsonian to construct new museums on the National Mall.

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Update:

The long-delayed Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino and Women’s History Museum are finally close to becoming reality. Congress voted to authorize the creation of the two museums late Monday night as part of a $2.3-trillion year-end government spending and virus relief package.

The bill now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, and he’s expected to sign it this week.

Original story continues below:

A Republican U.S. senator from Utah blocked legislation Thursday that would establish the Smithsonian’s first museum for Latinx people, dashing the hopes — for now — of bipartisan lawmakers and activists who have sought for decades to build it.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah cast the sole vote against a measure that would have approved the creation of the National Museum of the American Latino, saying it would deepen racial and cultural division in the U.S. 

“The last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups,” Lee said. “At this moment in the history of our diverse nation, we need our federal government and the Smithsonian Institution itself to pull us closer together and not further apart.”

Lee also squashed a companion effort to establish a women’s history museum.

Bipartisan sponsors had hoped to pass the legislation with unanimous consent, a strategy that can move noncontroversial measures through the chamber more quickly. A companion bill already passed the House by voice vote in July.

Proponents of the museum took offense to Lee’s use of the phrase “separate but equal” to describe popular Smithsonian museums like the National Museum of African American History and Culture or the National Museum of the American Indian.

“To use phrases like ‘separate but equal’ really drives home the xenophobia on his part,” Estuardo Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Friends of the American Latino Museum, told DCist/WAMU. “When we look at the success of the Native American and African American museums, they have reenergized the National Mall. The more we bring in those diverse stories, the more the current makeup of this country will embrace its full history.”

The Smithsonian Institution’s under-representation of the Latinx community was first documented and publicized 26 years ago with the publication of a damning report called Willful Neglect. “The Institution almost entirely excludes and ignores Latinos in nearly every aspect of its operations,” concludes the report, written by a Smithsonian task force.

Efforts to better represent the more than 60 million Latinx people living in the United States soon coalesced into a push to create a new museum.

“To make this a political issue, to make this a ‘left campaign,’ is truly insulting,” Rodriguez said. “Moderates to far-right conservatives supported the House bill, and senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have taken a stand and made public statements saying they recognize that diversity is what makes us great.”

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who backed the bill that would have created a women’s history museum, said Lee’s dissenting vote “seems wrong.”

“Surely in a year where we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, this is the time, this is the moment to finally pass the legislation unanimously recommended by an independent commission to establish an American women’s history museum in our nation’s capital,” Collins said Thursday. “I regret that will not occur this evening, but we will not give up the fight.”

Rodriguez with the Friends of the American Latino Museum believes the initiative can get through the Senate this year, if it’s included it in the omnibus spending bill.

“I’ve got the calluses,” he said. “We’ve reintroduced this bill three times before. It’s a bump, but we’re not deterred.”

Related:

House Passes Bill To Create Smithsonian American Latino Museum

Filed Under: american latino museum, museums, National Museum of Women's History, smithsonian,