Theatre of the Borderlands: Conflict, Violence, and Healing

299 Pages·2015·4.334 MB·English

by  Iani del Rosario Moreno

Theatre of
the Borderlands
15_546_Moreno.indb 1 7/15/15 12:52 PM
Theatre of
the Borderlands
Conflict, Violence,
and Healing
Iani del Rosario Moreno
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
15_546_Moreno.indb 3 7/15/15 12:52 PM
Published by Lexington Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB
Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moreno, Iani del Rosario.
Theatre of the borderlands : conflict, violence, and healing / by Iani del Rosario
Moreno.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-6866-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-7391-6867-7 (electronic)
1. Mexican drama—Mexican-American Border Region—History and criticism. 2.
Mexican drama—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Mexican-American Border
Region—In literature. 4. Violence in literature. I. Title.
PQ7291.M46M68 2015
860.9'9721—dc23
2015011622
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
15_546_Moreno.indb 4 7/15/15 12:52 PM
This book is dedicated to
Misha and Smyla,
my loyal companions who spent
entire nights and days by my side
while I worked on this project
15_546_Moreno.indb 5 7/15/15 12:52 PM
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1 Invisible Journeys to the Land of the Free 1
2 The Indigenous World: A Theatre of Resistance 35
3 The Desert Voice that Clamors for Popular Saints and
Miraculous Souls 75
4 Narcoteatro: An Aesthetic of Fear 115
5 The Ciudad Juárez Tragedy: Maquiladora Dreams and
City Demons 161
6 Tijuana: A Journey to Paradox 209
Conclusion 251
Bibliography 263
Index 281
About the Author 289
vii
15_546_Moreno.indb 7 7/15/15 12:52 PM
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the people who have sup-
ported me over the years in this journey and believed in this project’s poten-
tial. The Dramatists of the north of Mexico were very humble and giving.
I wish to thank Hugo Salcedo, Enrique Mijares, Manuel Talavera Trejo,
Medardo Treviño, Antonio Zúñiga, Demetrio Ávila, Larisa López, Leticia
López Sánchez, Jorge Celaya, and Alejandro Román for welcoming me into
their worlds and enlightening me about the Borderlands. Their plays not only
fascinate me but also make me think, question, and dream. Now it is my turn
to introduce the Border, its people, and surroundings to a new set of readers.
In Mexico I wish to thank: Rocío Galicia, friend and fellow researcher of
the Teatro del norte, for sharing her enthusiasm and materials and for open-
ing her personal library to me. Francisco Félix Berumen of the COLEF and
Armando Partida Tayzan of UNAM were very generous of their time and
granted me interviews. Rodolfo Álvarez Leyva, General director of Centro
Cultural Alborada of Tijuana, opened his space, his city, and enthusiasm for
Teatro del norte and Border arts to me.
I am forever indebted to Suffolk University and its students for having be-
lieved in and supported me on this project and to Lexington Books. I won the
Summer Stipend Award in 2008, allowing me to travel to northern Mexico
and Mexico City, to conduct thirteen interviews with the most important dra-
matists of Teatro del Norte and to acquire the primary material for this book.
In the fall of 2010, I was given a one-course release allowing me time to
write and further research the book. Additionally, I applied and was granted
several research assistantship awards over the years. My research assistants
openhandedly gave their time and enthusiasm to the project and were invalu-
able: Denitza Georgieva, Blair Balchunas, Janet Girardot, Brian Contreras,
Susana Madrigal, and Kristen Adams worked tirelessly.
ix
15_546_Moreno.indb 9 7/15/15 12:52 PM
x Acknowledgments
In the United States I wish to acknowledge the help provided by many
people who read chapters of my manuscript: Cynthia Goldzman, Elliot
Gabriel, Daniel Judson, Carlos Humberto Moreno Pineda, Colleen Rua,
Camille Weiss, James Weiss, Tom Illingworth, Stephen Thompson, thank
you for paying attention to detail. My special thanks are extended to the staff
of the Interlibrary Loan office at The Mildred F. Sawyer Library at Suffolk
University, thank you ordering so many books and articles for me over the
years, and to Bonnie Besdin and the rest of the staff at the Suffolk University
Second Language Center. Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber helped me formulate
initial ideas of the project. Chris Dakin formatted the entire manuscript. Lenin
Tejeda created the painting for the cover page; it is beautiful. Thank you to
Camille and James Weiss, Colleen Rua, and Stephen Thompson for sugges-
tions for titles of the chapters as well as the book title. A special thank-you to
Stuart Day, Kirsten Nigro, Gail Bulman, and Jacqueline Bixler for your sup-
port over the years and for promoting Latin American Theatre in the United
States, and to my colleagues in the World Languages & Cultural Studies
Department at Suffolk University. I wish to express my gratitude to the late
George Woodyard. He was my mentor and friend. He educated and inspired
my new love for Latin American Theatre. He was involved in this project
from the beginning and gave me sound advice. I just wish he had been able
to see this book completed.
I want to thank my parents and sisters for supporting me over the years.
I wish to include a special thanks to my husband Mark Rasmussen. He has
been with me in every step of the project. Thank you for reading all the
chapters, providing valuable suggestions and criticism, and for letting me talk
about the world of the Borderlands for hours.
15_546_Moreno.indb 10 7/15/15 12:52 PM
Introduction
The culture and history of the Border region between the United States and
Mexico and the work of Hugo Salcedo and other dramatists focusing on this
topic have fueled my imagination and research over the years. Salcedo was
the young Mexican dramatist who was internationally recognized for having
just won Spain’s Tirso de Molina Award for best Spanish-language play of
the year.1 In the mid-1990s, I met Salcedo and created an academic friendship
that provided me unrestricted access to the author and his plays. I have had
the privilege of analyzing, directing, and staging some of his works. Through
Salcedo, I learned of the theatrical phenomenon described as Teatro del
Norte and was introduced to other important dramatists of northern Mexico:
Enrique Mijares, Manuel Talavera Trejo, Medardo Treviño, Antonio Zúñiga,
and Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, among others. They live in different Border
states of what is called the “Frontera Norte” and are actively writing, produc-
ing, staging, directing, publishing, and teaching theater. In the years 2000,
2006, 2008, and 2012, I received invitations to be the keynote speaker at
conferences about theater in the Borderlands, organized in Northern Mexican
states. These visits enlightened me to the relationship between the Border-
lands and its dramatists on both sides of the Border and made their world
come to life in front of my eyes.
In the spring semester of 2007, I was asked to teach a senior seminar at
Suffolk University. I proposed a course that would introduce undergraduate
students to the United States-Mexican Border region and the most important
Mexican dramatists living and writing about the Borderlands. My course
was titled “The United States-Mexico Periphery: Border Theatre in the New
Millennium.” The response from the students enrolled in the course was very
enthusiastic. The students suggested that this course be required of all Span-
ish majors and minors. Encouraged by the positive student reactions, I offered
xi
15_546_Moreno.indb 11 7/15/15 12:52 PM
xii Introduction
the course again in the fall of 2009. Both courses and class discussions helped
me plan how to expand my project into a book.
The history of the Borderlands began with the signing of the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, when the Border region was divided into the
Southern Border and the Frontera Norte, making residents of the Southern
Border U.S. citizens and those of the Frontera Norte Mexican citizens. The
inhabitants of this region have more in common as a people than with the
rest of their respective countries because of a shared geography, history,
economy, and culture. Arguably, the approximate twenty-four million in-
habitants of this region, which covers an area of 157,600 square miles and
extends for 1,954 miles, comprise a society with a unique history and culture.
The dramatists of La Frontera del Norte write about a theater that internalizes
this unique history, with its inhospitable geography, expansive territories,
and lack of communication and support from the rest of Mexico, which left
the region to chart its own cultural and philosophical course. The dramatists
evoke this isolation in their productions, particularly those dealing with the
indigenous peoples, border crossings, heroes and folk saints, the Border
metropolises of Tijuana and Juárez, and the violence of this communal strip.
Individuals who reside in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands are accustomed
to frequent crossings—both legal and illegal—of la franja “the ditch” for
work, shopping, education, and business. This perception leads writers to
ponder the frequency with which a person can cross a boundary line before
losing the notion that there is one. For indeed there is no Border patrol sta-
tion that can prevent Mexican customs, ideas, tastes, stories, songs, values,
instincts, or attitudes from entering U.S. Border cities, such as San Diego
and El Paso (Gibbs 38-39). This preoccupation makes writer Oscar Casares
inquire in “Crossing the Border Without Losing Your Past” whether people
can maintain an association with their Mexican heritage when living on the
Border in a city such as Brownsville, Texas, located less than a mile away
from Matamoros, Mexico. Living in this influx, individuals realize they can
exist simultaneously in both worlds, and that their home is not in Mexico
or the United States, but that the true meaning of home is achieved through
the migration between the two (Casares A29). These “actual crossings” also
prove that stronger familial bonds and networks have been created through
time in the U.S.-Mexican Border region (Alvarez 463).
There are many designations that apply to the Border between Mexico and
the United States. In 2001 a new term gained popularity after being used in
a special issue of Time magazine on June 11, 2001, Amexica. On the cover
title it is written that “the border is vanishing before our eyes, creating a new
world for all of us: Welcome to Amexica.” This special issue contained seven
articles which described la nueva frontera “the new border.” The articles
15_546_Moreno.indb 12 7/15/15 12:52 PM