Taking inspiration from the sustained campaign that led to Saturday Night Live’s hiring of Sasheer Zamata, the first black comedienne to join the cast in nearly seven years, Twitter activists have started the hashtag #StillNoLatinas to call for a Latina comedienne to be hired by the long-running sketch show.
#StillNoLatinas — the initials are SNL, get it? — was launched after the March 8 episode, which included a skit satirizing Men’s Rights groups but also offended many for its depiction of an airheaded beauty-pageant type named Marisol who spoke English loudly and poorly. Sample quote from Marisol, speaking of her husband who brought her to America as a mail-order bride: “He was so persistent, and so I yet him bring me to USA!” (Watch the offending skit here.) To add insult to injury, the caricature was played by Cecily Strong, who is not of Latino descent.
Though the diversity numbers on SNL are pretty terrible across the board, they’re particularly egregious when it comes to Latino participation. As the Washington Post notes, Latinos have constituted the U.S.’s largest minority group since 2003, but the only castmembers who can claim Latin American heritage are comedienne Noel Wells (“a quarter Hispanic” according to her IMDb page) and male alumni Fred Armisen and Horatio Sanz.
