Thread by @HuffPost

This #LatinxHeritageMonth, HuffPost is celebrating the Latinx community and the voices that exemplify its pride, success and diversity. One of those voices is “Vida” creator and showrunner Tanya Saracho. huffp.st/FPcIXeB

Saracho is trying to create the roles she didn’t have at the beginning of her career. When she moved to Chicago to act, the only roles available to her were what she calls “Maria roles”: often maids or prostitutes, with just one line.

So Saracho found ways to create work and spaces for herself and other Latinx artists. For years, Latinx audiences have been a major source of revenue for Hollywood. Yet their stories make up a disproportionately low portion of what gets told on screen.

As a recent study laid out, nearly 20% of the U.S. population identifies as Hispanic/Latino on the census, but just 3.5% of the top 100 grossing films at the U.S. box office from 2007 to 2019 featured Hispanic/Latino leads or co-leads. huffp.st/V5dHtqB

And when Latinx people do appear on screen, it’s often as side characters and in stereotypical roles like the ones Saracho kept encountering, audition after audition. It’s still exceedingly rare for Latinx artists to get opportunities to tell their stories. 📸 AP Images

When Latinx creators do get to tell their stories, it’s often still in limited ways. So the goal is to keep broadening the kinds of stories and the kinds of people who get to tell those stories. Check out our full #LatinxHeritageMonth article here: huffp.st/FPcIXeB