The Latino Americans

The opening programme spans the period from 1565 to 1880, as the first Spanish explorers enter North America and the US expands into territories in the south west that had been home to Native Americans and English and Spanish colonies.

The second programme in the series documents how the American population was reshaped by the influx of people that began in 1880 and continued into the 1940s, as Cubans, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans began arriving in the US and started to build strong Latino-American communities in South Florida, Los Angeles and New York.

(War and Peace (1942-1954)) The documentary series moves on to World War II and the years immediately following it, during which hundreds of thousands of Latino Americans served their new country yet still faced discrimination and a fight for civil rights back in the United States.

The series continues by highlighting the increase in immigration from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic stretching from the post-World War II years into the early 1960s as the new arrivals sought economic opportunities.

Labour leaders organise farm workers in California as activists push for better education opportunities.

The final episode of the series focuses on a second wave of Cubans arriving in Miami during the Mariel exodus and the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans fleeing civil wars, death squads and unrest to head north. The debate over undocumented immigrants flares up with calls for tightened borders, English-only laws and efforts to brand them as a drain on public resources.