That Time When Turner Classic Movies Called Carmen Miranda a Latin AND Hispanic Icon

The Turner Classic Movies promo started with festive music and a shout of “Olé!” The network was celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Descending down a scene of a man and woman dancing appeared the phrase, “Honoring the Latin and Hispanic.” Across the screen flashed scenes labeling performers “Pioneers,” “Innovators,” “and Icons.” When I saw who danced and sang with “and Icons” emblazoned on the screen, I felt shock and disappointment. It was Carmen Miranda in a scene from WEEK-END IN HAVANA (1941). She is an everlasting icon, but TCM had just implied she was Latin AND Hispanic. Miranda is only one of those things, and it isn’t Hispanic. She is Lusitanic. In fact, she is the product of two Portuguese speaking cultures.

Carmen Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha. Parents Maria Emília Miranda and José Maria Pinto da Cunha welcomed her on February 9, 1909. She and her family lived in a village called Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada, part of the municipality Marco de Canavezes in northern Portugal. At less than a year old, Carmen departed her village, and she would never return to Portugal. Her working class family immigrated to Brazil in search of more opportunities. The developing nation with its growing economy offered the promise of more social mobility and the chance of an education without having to learn a new language. Carmen grew up in Brazil, and she became thoroughly culturally Brazilian and proud of the only homeland she knew. Why she never relinquished her Portuguese citizenship for a Brazilian one isn’t documented.

Carmen’s identity is complex. She’s the most famous Brazilian of American classic film, yet she was Portuguese in ethnicity and nationality. Sometimes Americans forget our country is not the only melting pot nation. As a descendent of a Romance language speaking nation in Latin Europe, we can call her a Latin. Some Americans only refer to people from Latin America when they say Latin. Based on where she grew up, Carmen was that type of Latin, too. We can call her a Latina in two different ways. I can distinguish between Latin and Latino or Latine in English, but I can’t in Portuguese. To call her a Latin in Portuguese is to call her a Latina. That’s how to say Latin in Portuguese. We can use Latina as a cultural-geographic, non-racialized term to describe her. Carmen is Lusitanic, Latin, and Latina. She’s an original Lusitanic Latina of the silver screen!

I wrote to Scott McGee about my disappointment at seeing TCM erase Carmen Miranda’s Lusitanic identity in the promo. He’s the Senior Director of Original Programming at Turner Classic Movies. We first met at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and when I started attending the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF), we got to chat more in person. We eventually became Facebook friends. In our written conversations, he was very nice and he took in what I was saying. I told him ways that TCM could be more culturally sensitive to Lusophones and my hopes of what the channel could do in the future.

The producer of the promo contacted me. She had seen my post about it on Facebook. I was surprised to hear from her. I didn’t know this was her project. I knew her and like her! Even before she worked for TCM, I met her through the online classic film community and attending TCMFF. When I suffered my postpartum hemorrhage in 2021, she reached out to me, and that meant a lot. She let me know the promo went through their corporate Hispanic and Latine BRG team. She’s of Colombian and El Salvadorean heritage, so it was really important to her that she get this made correctly. I felt bad that her wanting to proudly represent Latine peoples onscreen had clashed with my assertion of Carmen’s non-Hispanic identity. I didn’t want to make her feel bad about something she should’ve been 100% proud of. She did that right thing in consulting experts, and they failed her. I felt mad at them for her.

I asked her if any of those experts were Lusophone, and I didn’t get an answer, so I’m pretty sure none of them were Brazilian or Lusophone. In the United States, Americans overlook or mislabel Lusitanics often. We get told, no, you’re Hispanics for varying reasons. Suddenly someone who knows very little about Iberia says all people from there are Hispanics because Romans named the peninsula Hispania. They ignore that Portuguese people identify with the Roman state of Lusitania, which covered much of what became modern Portugal. That’s where the Luso prefix comes from that starts the word Lusophone, that describes more people than the Portuguese. That’s why Lusitanics use the #Luso to connect with each other online.

Before the 2020 US Census, PALCUS lobbied the government to not automatically categorize any Lusophones as Hispanic. They hired consultant Dulce Maria Scott. She thought the rejection of the term Hispanic was due to “adaptation and integration into the U.S” being “very painful.” While many Portuguese-Americans see themselves as a historically disadvantaged ethnic minority, and they see parallel histories and treatment with Hispanics, the potential access to aid Hispanics get was not motivation enough for the overall group to claim Hispanic status. They would not erase their cultural identity. Outsiders erase or ignore it enough.

I’m not sure why experts in Hispanic and Latine cultures wouldn’t see an issue in incorporating Carmen Miranda into a video meant to highlight Latin AND Hispanic subjects. Surely some of them most have been from those cultures. Wouldn’t they know they were encouraging Americans in their misbelief that Brazilians are Hispanics? Brazil is the biggest country in Latin American in land mass and in population. Between the Lusophones in Brazil and in other Latin American countries, Portuguese runs a very close second in being the most spoken language in Latin America. When the video came out, I reached out to my friend and Luso World Cinema Blogathon co-host Letícia Magalhães. She’s a Brazilian with Portuguese ancestry. I asked her what she thought about the video, and she wholeheartedly agreed with my points.

If I could ask TCM one thing, it’s to recognize when a subject is Lusitanic or descended from those cultures. To help that inform how they are discussed if that is important to the discussion or how they are being represented. To not assume, their names are pronounced the Spanish way. When Portuguese names have similar spellings or when words in the language are the same spelling as in Spanish, they usually have different pronunciations. When TCM aired Teresa Prata’s SLEEPWALKING LAND (2007), both the channel’s announcer and host Alicia Malone pronounced the name Couto the Spanish way, Koe-toe. I appreciated that host Jacqueline Stewart pronounced his Portuguese surname as he would, Koe-tu. Even European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese have different pronunciations at times.

My ultimate fantasy would be for TCM to either celebrate Dia de Portugal (June 10th) or World Portuguese Language Day (May 5th) in its programming. The first day would allow TCM to cover Portuguese and Portuguese-American creatives and film portrayals, and that second day would allow TCM to celebrate Lusitanic creatives from any of the Portuguese-speaking countries of the world. Some hard hitting discussion of colonization or colonial attitudes is fine. A programmer would find enough material to fill either day, even from the classic film era and contemporary classics. While the subject matter would seem to have niche appeal, the films would have mass appeal. Some already air on TCM, only the Luso framing is missing.

Here’s the TCM promotional video for Hispanic Heritage Month from 2024 I wrote about:

This post is part of the 2025 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. To read other blogger’s entries and learn more about Lusophone films, creatives, characters, and film settings, click the image below!