The Smithsonian designated a building it already controls as the permanent home of its National Museum of the American Latino, a move critics say was designed to dodge a congressional fight over exhibits they call Marxist propaganda.
Mike Gonzalez, a former Bush-era State Department official now at the Heritage Foundation, shared a report with Fox News Digital examining the museum's 2022 inaugural exhibition, "¡Presente!" His conclusion: the taxpayer-funded exhibits read less like American history and more like a left-wing syllabus, complete with panels on drag politics, gender identity, and foreign Marxist figures with thin ties to the United States.
The Smithsonian chose its Arts and Industries Building in Washington, D.C., as the museum's permanent location. Because the institution already controls the property, it avoided the kind of Capitol Hill authorization battle that would have come with a site on National Park Service land, previously under consideration. The Smithsonian declined to comment on Gonzalez's report or his public criticisms.
Gonzalez, speaking from Israel at the time of his interview, did not hold back about the Smithsonian's strategy. He argued the institution picked the Arts and Industries Building precisely to keep lawmakers out of the conversation.
"They want to use this as kind of a ruse."
His broader demand went further. Gonzalez told Fox News Digital that the museum should not exist at all.
"We need to fire the Smithsonian leadership. We need to get rid of the Latino museum. It needs to be de-authorized. It should not exist."
Gonzalez testified alongside Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, during congressional hearings in July. The scope of that testimony was not detailed, but his Heritage Foundation report laid out a case that the "¡Presente!" exhibition promoted a worldview far outside the American mainstream.
The Heritage Foundation report catalogs specific panels from the 2022 exhibition. One, titled "Jose Julio Sarria: Drag and Politics," describes Sarria as a "legendary drag performer" and "the first openly gay person to run for public office in the U.S." Another features a Cuban transgender HIV/AIDS activist who fled Cuba during the Mariel Boatlift.
Then there is Orlando Letelier. The exhibition includes a panel on Letelier, a foreign minister under former Chilean President Salvador Allende, featuring a 1976 quote in which Letelier discussed his imprisonment under the Pinochet regime and his later "liberation" in the name of restoring human rights. Letelier died in a car explosion in Washington, D.C., that same year.
Gonzalez questioned why Letelier appeared in a museum dedicated to the American Latino experience at all:
"Orlando Letelier has nothing to do with America, other than the fact that he died in a car explosion in Washington D.C., in 1976, but I'm old enough to remember that he was a cause-celebre of the left [then]."
He went further, accusing the curators of ideological bias:
"This is not an American story. The only reason he's there is because the curators who worked in this exhibit betrayed who they are... They're Marxists."
The report also flagged a cartoon mocking the United States over the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair. Gonzalez noted that the Nicaraguan regime the U.S. opposed during that era, led by Daniel Ortega, is back in power decades later and has recently eliminated elections. The exhibit, according to the report, does not address that outcome.
On Cuba, the report found that an exhibit covering former Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista omits the oppressive reign of the Castro brothers who replaced him. Gonzalez, whose own father was imprisoned by Batista before Fidel Castro's 1959 overthrow, said the omission reveals the curators' sympathies.
"Havana perhaps has not been at war since the British invasion of 1763 and yet it looks like it's been carpet-bombed: It's been carpet-bombed by socialism."
The Heritage Foundation report also highlighted the exhibition's use of the phrase "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us", a slogan long associated with open-borders activism. Gonzalez, himself a descendant of people who remained in U.S.-acquired territory, rejected the framing. He described himself as "a proud American of [Cuban heritage]" who does not "run around calling myself a Hispanic."
His central charge: the museum treats 70 million Americans of Hispanic descent as a grievance class rather than as citizens with a stake in the country's success.
"They create[d] a hothouse, an incubator of grievances among these 70 million [Americans of Hispanic descent]."
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican who serves as a Smithsonian Regent and who himself fled Cuban socialism, has described the Smithsonian as a "crown jewel" of the United States, one that should be held to that standard. His spokesman, Rey Anthony, told Fox News Digital that Gimenez expects fairness from the institution.
"The Congressman believes that the Smithsonian should be fair and balanced, aim for truth, and present both sides of the equation."
Shortly after Gonzalez's interview, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III announced his retirement after four decades with the institution. No reason for the departure was given, and the Smithsonian offered no public comment tying the timing to the ongoing criticism.
The procedural question at the center of this fight is straightforward. Congress authorized the creation of the National Museum of the American Latino. But by parking it in a building the Smithsonian already owns, the institution sidestepped the kind of legislative review that comes with new construction on federal land. Lawmakers who might have asked hard questions about exhibit content during an approval process never got the chance.
What those exhibits contain, panels on drag politics, tributes to a Chilean Marxist official, cartoons mocking U.S. foreign policy, and immigration slogans lifted from activist rallies, is now a matter of public record, documented in the Heritage Foundation report. Whether the content reflects the values of the 70 million Americans it claims to represent is a question the Smithsonian has so far refused to answer.
When a publicly funded institution won't defend its own work and won't face the elected officials who fund it, taxpayers are entitled to wonder whose story is really being told.
