While Dora, the character, continues to be pan-Latina, the film grounds her in an actual geographical location: the Amazon rainforest. "Parapata is a name in Quechua, which means 'the rainy hill,' " says Americo Mendoza-Mori, a consultant on the film, who teaches Quechua at the University of Pennsylvania. In it, she sets off to find treasure in a fictional lost Inca city called Parapata. Within less than a year, the show became the top commercial hit for preschoolers ages 2 to 5.Īlmost 20 years after her creation, Dora is now being re-imagined as a teenager (played by Isabela Moner) in a live action film. "I said look, I think it's important that kids of different Latino backgrounds be able to identify with Dora." So they decided to move forward with a pan-Latina character, not from anywhere in particular.Īnd so finally, Dora the Explorer, with her signature bob and pink shirt, aired on television screens for the first time on Aug. "Someone came up with the idea we should make her very embedded in one culture - Mexican or Puerto Rican or Cuban or what have you," says Cortes. Cortes helped with cultural sensitivity and answered big questions, like where Dora should be from. So they brought in consultants like Carlos Cortes, a professor from the University of California, Riverside. The creators behind Dora set out to empower Latinx kids and normalize bilingualism. She came back and declared that the show they were working on would now feature a Latina.Įric Weiner, another creator of the show, says, "At the time, Pat Buchanan was running for president, spewing all this hatred about, 'We don't want Spanish speakers in our country.' So this idea of not building barriers gave extra meaning and heart and urgency to the mission of the show." But months into developing the show, the creative head at Nickelodeon, Brown Johnson, went to a conference where she learned that of the 80 prime-time characters under the age of 18, not a single one was Latinx. Originally, they imagined the girl would be white. After moving through various animals, they decided on a young girl who would go on adventures and ask the audience of preschoolers at home for help. In the late 1990s, he and two others were tasked with brainstorming the next hit on Nick Jr. "It was a skunk," says Chris Gifford, one of the show's creators. This past weekend, Dora moved to the big screen, in Dora and the Lost City of Gold.īut before she was an explorer who traversed the world with her backpack and map, she was Stinky. She debuted on Nickelodeon almost 20 years ago. Vince Valitutti/Courtesy of Paramount Picturesĭora the Explorer is one of the most recognized Latinx characters on TV. Isabela Moner stars as Dora in Dora and the Lost City of Gold
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