John Leguizamo has long been established as among our most versatile actors, in film, television and Broadway.

Now, the longtime Latino activist presents today ’s years-in-the-making, eye-opening, three-part PBS series, “American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos.”

His activism, Leguizamo explained in a virtual interview, began at home.  “When my mom was living in Queens, she found out that the schools there, especially in the Latin community, were not getting any funding. My mom became an activist and worked really hard with senators and legislators to get funding — and she did it!

“I was always socially active but then I got politically active as well. I think it happened when I when I had my kids,” – his daughter was born in 1999 and his son in 2000. “I just felt like I had to make the world a better place for my kids — and everybody’s kids.”

What “American Historia” reveals is indisputable about empires that once existed but have been virtually erased by historians as taught in American schools.

“You know, John Hopkins University did a study that found that 87% of Latino contributions to the making of the U.S. are not in history textbooks. So what I did,” Leguizamo, 60, said, “I took that 87% and put it into the series so that we as Latinos know that we helped build America.

“That we’re the reason America is such a great empire in the world. Because we, alongside our Black brothers and sisters, built America.

“So that’s what I did with this series: Letting them know that the first European language spoken in America was not English, but Spanish. And we’ve been here since 1492” – when Columbus came – “and then before that. Because we were incredible empires, some of the most advanced empires of that time.

“The research I’ve been doing for a couple of decades. I created the series as well, put all those facts into the series.

“We had larger populations. I mean, the Aztecs are about 30 million, the Inca about 30 million, and the Maya were like 20 (million). So we were huge populations here, surviving.

“The Incas did the first brain surgeries that were hundreds of years earlier and more successful than anything until the Civil War in America. They had anesthesia.

“Latin cuisine is the mother cuisine of all cuisines. Without our tomato sauce, there is no Italian cuisine. There’s no Indian cuisine without our chilis. There’s no Thai food. There’s no spicy Indian food without our vanilla and chocolate. There’s no French pastries. There’s no Switzerland without our chocolate.

“I mean, we give them one of the most important foods and the tastiest foods.”

“American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos” airs Sept. 27 on PBS