My painting was showcased at the Smithsonian. Donald Trump censored it.

Trump’s war on Latino art is an attempt to whitewash history.

Credit: Felipe Galindo Gómez

By Felipe Galindo Gómez (aka Feggo)

In 1999—the same year I became a US citizen—I created a painting that continues to resonate with viewers today. It depicts a young boy peering through a slat on the Mexico side of the southern border wall while his father looks on. In the distance, bright white, starlike fireworks illuminate a deep-blue night sky, while the barrier in the foreground bears rusty red and white stripes.

The image evokes the American flag—a symbol generations have looked to with hope—capturing the spirit of the United States as an aspirational nation and a haven for immigrants: a place where people from all over the world can build new lives and enrich their adopted home with the cultures they bring.

In the distance glows a bright yellow city, reminiscent of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold once sought by Spanish conquistadors. For countless immigrants, documented or not, the United States has long represented a modern El Dorado—a land of golden opportunity. Sadly, that promise feels less certain today.

At the same time, the painting confronts harder truths—the barriers we build and the spirit of exclusion that continues to shadow this country’s ideals. It can be tempting to look away from these realities, but art, to me, is an act of witness. It must tell the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable. I have never been one to shy away from that. I titled the piece “4th of July, view from the South Border.”

Twenty-six years later, Donald Trump is censoring my work as part of his broader campaign to stifle Latino art and whitewash history. Until recently, “4th of July” was on display in the exhibition “Presente! A Latino History of the United States” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, within the Molina Family Latino Gallery in Washington DC. This was intended as a temporary home for the piece, with the ultimate goal of including it in the future Museum of the American Latino, a project the Smithsonian has been developing since it was first proposed in 1994.

Here’s Trump’s rationale for censoring my work, along with the work of other Latino artists, in a post via Truth Social: “Everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” In other words: whitewashing our history to remove all the unpleasant bits—the very thing my work is dedicated to pushing back against.

The White House backed up Trump’s unhinged social media rant with a further statement that “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian.” In the post, the administration goes on to accuse art from the Latino and other communities of being “hardcore woke” and “defining Latino history as centuries of victimhood and exploitation.”

When I learned what had happened, I traveled from New York City to the Smithsonian in Washington DC, hoping to document my work before its removal. To my surprise, not only had the piece already been taken down, but the entire exhibition was closed—without any explanation or notification.

In speaking with museum staff, I sensed their discomfort and fear of saying too much under new political pressures. I don’t fault them; I understand the difficult position they are in. After all, this administration has already fired close to 300,000 federal employees. My concern lies with the growing culture of censorship that threatens artists and institutions alike—an atmosphere where art that challenges, questions, or reflects difficult truths can too easily be silenced.

The president and his allies like to claim that artists like me—who present America in its true complexity, as an aspirational, inspirational yet flawed and deeply imperfect nation—hate America and want to see it destroyed. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I came to this country from my hometown of Cuernavaca, Mexico, because I believed in its promise. I settled in New York City in 1983—a place where cultures from around the world mix and meld in beautiful, unexpected ways. I am Mexican by birth and American by choice. And the subjects of my works reflect these layers in a way that Trump, our new censor-in-chief, couldn’t possibly understand.

I look around today and see images of Latino Americans being detained and mistreated by masked, unidentified agents—scenes that echo the themes of displacement, fear, and resilience that have long shaped my work. I see a president who promised to shut down immigration, and is now doing everything in his power to silence any art or criticism that gives the lie to his cartoonishly racist and inaccurate portrait of my people. And I see too many people who are willing to go along with all of this, or stay silent in the hopes that his campaign of retribution doesn’t come for them next.

We’re coming up on America’s 250th anniversary as a nation. And based on everything we’re seeing out of this administration so far, “America 250” promises to be nothing more than an ahistorical whitewash that paves over the country’s actual, complex history in favor of comforting fairy tales.

If that indeed comes to pass, it will be in part because work like mine—which helps capture America as it is—was allowed to be erased by a president who knows nothing of history nor art, but wants to use both in service of his authoritarian project.

Felipe Galindo Gómez, aka Feggo, is an artist whose work has been published and exhibited around the world, and a participant in Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.