Today is the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month 2021. Although Latinos do all kinds of crucial work in real life, in movies and TV shows, they’re almost invisible. In Star Trek, we’ve got Macha Hernandez in the early drafts for Star Trek: The Next Generation, before she became Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby)...
Then there was Ensign Sonia Gomez (Lycia Naff) in exactly two episodes of The Next Generation, though she seems to have a greater presence in Star Trek novels, having transferred to the Starfleet Corps of Engineers.
It wasn’t until Star Trek: Voyager came around that there was a Star Trek series with a Latino on the main cast. Actually two: Robert Beltran playing Commander Chakotay, and Roxann Dawson playing the half-Klingon Lt. B’Elanna Torres.
For Torres, it’s the Klingon half of her DNA that she struggles with. The human part of her DNA is not cause for concern. Her father, John Torres, was apparently so bland as a kid that he was nicknamed “John Snorres.”
However, I do find it interesting that in the episode “Lineage,” in which Lt. Torres wants to edit her baby’s DNA to make her look less Klingon, the extrapolated child looks whiter. But that could be explained in-universe with that the baby’s father, Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), is white.
Being half-Klingon makes Lt. Torres, in the view of some, even more Latina than the more literal-minded among us would think. Cristina Escobar on Medium (note that this is subject to the article limit if you’re not a subscriber), writes that
Sometimes I think we’d be better off ditching “Latinx” and instead embracing a term like “mestizo” (mestizx?), one that recognizes that our identity is not founded in the place of Latin America but rather in the aftermath of colonization and the ensuing, fraught mixing of our ancestors’ cultures. We’re “ni de aquí, ni de allá” no matter where we are or presumably, how far we go. That’s what makes Roxann Dawson’s half-human, half Klingon B’Elanna Torres so Latina even as there’s no such thing in Star Trek. Played by a Latina, Torres’s name, identity struggles, and stereotypically “hot” temper clearly make her one of ours. And as a kid, I watched her week in and week out, rooting for Engineer Torres without really knowing why (it was her latinidad).
Also props to the Voyager writers for not giving her a humorously long name like B’Elanna Carmelita Concepcioncita Petrolera de las Torres Pica Morales (unlike the writers of The L Word with Sarah Shahi’s character).
Robert Beltran also considered his character a positive role model. But there are certain problematic elements that I’ve felt vaguely but haven’t quite articulated. Others have articulated problems that may or may not be the same ones I’ve felt. Robert Schmidt for Blue Corn Comics:
On UPN's Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Beltran played Chakotay, a Native American who attended Starfleet Academy before joining the rebel Maquis. The standard view is that Chakotay, the first continuing Native character in a Trek series, was an uplifting role model. "Chakotay is a passionate man who has earned Captain Janeway's respect as her friend and First Officer," Beltran once explained.
But Al Carroll (Mescalero Apache), a PhD student at Arizona State University, has another view. He dissected Chakotay's background in his thesis, "Depictions of Native Veterans in Fiction." Some excerpts:
The character of Chakotay in Star Trek: Voyager (STV) is every bit as much a creature of white fantasies as Billy Jack. STV's Chakotay is another "faithful companion" or sidekick to a white lead character, and in his own bizarre ways far more stereotypical than Tonto. At least Tonto was heroic and rescued the Lone Ranger once in awhile. Robert Beltran actually seems to imitate the old Westerns for his unflinchingly stone-faced Stoic portrayal. The character of Chakotay is a Frankenstein-like patchwork of New Age fantasies and misconceptions.
[...]
As many errors as the writers for STV made, it could actually have been far worse. In the original script for the episode "Tattoo," writer Larry Brody intended for Chakotay's people to be Mayans and gave them nonexistent "Mayan medicine wheels." Brody's script then began to resemble a Twilight Zone episode by further making the dubious assertion that the Mayan culture later became the Anasazi, leaping over several thousand miles and enormous cultural differences seemingly without any actual research.
All of these errors would be comical if not for the fact that STV's writers seem to be openly proselytizing their New Age beliefs, in sharp contrast to the usual militantly atheist viewpoint of Star Trek overall. Even the most cursory web search shows the reaction from fans to this New Age evangelism was overwhelmingly derisive and negative. Beltran himself was the target of much criticism for "passing." Beltran identified as Mexican until criticized by Natives, when he suddenly claimed to be Mayan. While his physical appearance leaves no doubt he has Indian ancestry, he has no ties to or understanding of Native cultures, as evidenced by his public defense of the New Age aspects of Chakotay as authentically Indian.
Tonight the Heroes & Icons (H & I) digital TV channel is running the Voyager episode “Real Life.” It’s an episode primarily about the Doctor (Robert Picardo), but it is significant for Lt. Torres because she draws on her own life experiences when she reprograms the Doctor’s holographic family.
The open thread question: What do you think about the Chakotay and Torres characters in Star Trek: Voyager in regards to the inclusion of Latino characters in TV and movies in general?