A new Twitter investigation revealed last week that Hillary “Hilaria” Baldwin—author, podcast host and wife to Alec Baldwin—is not actually Spanish, as we’ve been led to believe by the media and, of course, Baldwin herself.
While she admits she’s white, she maintains that she’s Spanish. And this is a problem: As reporter Aura Bogado points out, the magazine Latina has, in the past, elevated Baldwin’s celebrity, while simultaneously being “accused of erasing Black Latinas, and publishing pieces about how Latinas are somehow discriminated for not being dark enough.”
It was Brooklyn-based finance professional @lenibriscoe, though, who first laid down the Law and Order on Hilaria’s actual heritage on Dec. 21, beginning with this backhanded compliment: “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”
From there, @lenibriscoe lays out receipts quite plainly, from the debut of the Massachusetts-raised woman’s “fake Spanish accent debut” to the lack of that same accent in an Instagram post.
Hilaria Baldwin, for her part, defends her identity fully—well, sort of. On Instagram this Sunday morning (Dec. 27), she explained that she was “born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and Spain. My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the USA.” She speaks Spanish, and is raising her children as bilingual, and has given them Spanish names, too.
Still, that does nothing to dispute the receipts that her family, despite living in Spain now or whenever and for however long, is not actually from Spain.
As the original Twitter detective points out, Baldwin’s mother does not speak with a Spanish accent. She grew up in Massachusetts, as Baldwin’s grandfather likely also did (he was a professor there in the ‘60s).
Her paternal side offers no help in supporting Baldwin’s heritage claims, either.
Someone has changed her Wikipedia page to more accurately reflect her origins. Once described as having been born in Majorca, Spain, her birthplace now reads as Boston, Massachusetts. Under nationality, there’s this: “American, and certainly not Spanish.”
Bogado’s reflections on the issue are especially pertinent here. Consider the situation for immigrants throughout history, which intensified in 2007 with the Immigration Reform Act then was made more volatile by the bigotry espoused by Trump over the past few years: Was Hilaria Baldwin subject to any of that discrimination, exclusionary laws or straight up ire?
