TV REVIEWS : PBS Series Explores World of Latinos

Since its inception, the United States has been haunted by the question, “What is an American?” The latest attempt at an answer comes tonight in the 10th and final installment of the PBS series “Americas” (at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28).

The hourlong program tells us that the United States is the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, with some of its largest cities being gradually transformed into Latin meccas. Yet despite their growing numbers, Latinos remain a mystery to most Americans.

The program breaks U.S. Latins into three main groups: Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, Cuban-Americans in Miami and Puerto Ricans in New York City. Fortunately for local viewers, the best segment deals with Los Angeles. Unfortunately, by the time that material arrives, many viewers already may have remote-controlled themselves elsewhere.

The show’s centerpiece is called “The Taking of Bell Gardens”--a “Frontline”-like documentary on a small city in southeast Los Angeles with a 90% Latino population run by an Anglo city council. Pressed by what it sees as unfair city council actions, the Latin majority organizes itself into a takeover of city government.

This section efficiently condenses a two-year struggle into a textbook example of democracy in action. If only the rest of the program was as compelling: Instead, it meanders and does little justice to the complex nature of its subject matter. As with the rest of the series, it is less like state-of-the-art documentary and more like the classroom films we were force-fed in high school civics courses.