Five years after Congress greenlit a long-embattled proposal to create the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino (NMAL), the nascent institution has yet to make significant strides to construct a permanent home. Now, as the Trump administration moves to gut the Smithsonian of programs that it deems to “divide Americans based on race,” a bipartisan coalition of senators is advocating for a bill that would guarantee the NMAL a spot on the National Mall.
Eight senators across party lines — including Republican Florida Senator Ted Cruz, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla — co-sponsored a bill introduced earlier this month that would require the federal government to transfer a section of land along the National Mall to the Smithsonian for the museum’s construction.
The present bipartisan push for a Latino history museum comes as the Trump administration ramps up deportations, including ordering the deportation of 238 Latino men to a notorious maximum security facility in El Salvador last month. Crackdowns have also led to the immigration detention of Latino US citizens and legal residents, despite supporting documents.
Erika Hirugami, co-founder of the California-based UNDOC+ Collective, an organization supporting undocumented creatives, said she finds it ironic that legislation for the creation of NMAL was officially approved under the first Trump administration.
“NMAL was signed into law by the same president whose aesthetic axis is anchored by visual intimidation, photographic persecution, and tyrannical oppression toward ‘undoc+’ — or formerly or currently undocumented — families and people in the undocumented diaspora,” Hirugami told Hyperallergic.
“Can our administration truly be celebratory of Latine culture while our people are being persecuted, threatened, and deported?” Hirguami continued.
Under the Obama administration, a 23-person commission was convened in 2008 to study the potential creation of a national Latino museum. Nearly a decade later, a bill to create the museum was introduced in the Senate, where Republicans blocked its approval. Under President Donald Trump in December 2020, Congress approved the creation of the museum in a provision tucked within a $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus package. Since then, Republican-led efforts to restrict taxpayer funds from being used to develop the museum have hindered its development, and the museum has made little progress on constructing a permanent home.
The new legislation, called the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino Act, advocates for the National Park Service to transfer a site next to the Washington Monument to the museum. Concurrently, congressmembers introduced a similar bill for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
However, the active legislation stipulates that no new government funding will be issued for the museum, and that the bill would only create a land designation.
Estimates place the museum’s start-up costs between $600 to $800 million, half of which (at the time of approval) was expected to come from Congress. The remaining funding will be generated through private fundraising. The museum has raked in donations from corporate giants, including Fox, McDonald’s, and Ford. It could take a decade before a new museum building opens to the public.
During the 2024 fiscal year, Republicans attempted to prevent taxpayer money from flowing to the Latino museum and its inaugural 4,500-square-foot Molina Family Latino Gallery in the National Museum of American History, where it had opened in June 2022 with the exhibition ¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States.
The exhibition, which featured themes such as “War and US Expansion” and “Colonial Legacies,” sparked ire among conservative Latinos who publicly accused the museum of promoting an “unabashedly Marxist portrayal of history, religion, and economics.” The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, also took jabs at the museum last year, accusing its leaders of anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish bias and advocating for Congress to defund the museum.
Months after ¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States opened, legislation that would have created a spot for the National Museum of the American Latino on the National Mall was excluded from a 2023 funding bill, despite advocacy.
Influential cultural leaders and members of the public have long set their sights on the National Mall — the grassy stretch connecting the US Capitol, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial — as the ideal location for the physical museum. In a 2021 letter, Friends of the American Latino Museum urged Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch to consider locating the museum along the Mall, where it would be in a heavily trafficked tourist area among other Smithsonian organizations, including the Asian Art Museum, the African American History and Culture Museum, and the American History Museum.
Two Republicans, Cruz and Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, joined the bill weeks after President Trump’s widely criticized executive order mandating Vice President JD Vance to gut Smithsonian programs that involve critical race theory or non-essentialist views of gender. Notably, both Moreno and Cruz — a Colombian immigrant and the son of Cuban immigrants, respectively — have vocally supported some of the Trump administration’s cruelest immigration policies.
The NMAL has not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.