The purpose of this unit is to introduce teachers and students to three contemporary Chicano playwrights, Lu’s M. Valdez, Rubén Sierra and Carlos Morton, and one Mexican, Elena Garro, through short examples of their work. The historical background of Mexican and Chicano Theatre will be provided in order to enhance students’ understanding of what preceded each work. In order to appeal to the larger English-speaking audience, I have chosen contemporary theatre as the focus since I was unable to find any of the earlier works in translation. The Garro piece was included to represent contemporary Mexican drama because it so obviously contrasts with the formula of Chicano Theatre, which will be explained in the background section. In addition to serving this purpose of contrast, it is also comparatively similar in feeling to the Morton work as it provides a non-traditional perspective on a religious theme familiar to all Mexican Catholics. I chose to analyze only sections of
La Raza Pura
as I felt that the language of the play as a whole was inappropriate for a classroom setting. The extracted portions stand by themselves, I feel, as they reflect the flow of a specific theme throughout the piece.
Those themes, very briefly, are as follows.
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—
A Solid Home
(Garro)
1
a deceased family together in a tomb contemplates life and death and the purpose of their existence -
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—
Los Vendidos
(Valdez)
2
—an Americanized Mexican, during Reagan’s term as governor, searches California for the “perfect” token Mexican model to fill the political post -
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—
La Raza Pura
(Sierra)
3
a fragmented, avant garde approach to portraying stereotypical Mexicans in the context of an “All-Purpose Racial Agency” -
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—
El Jard’n
(Morton)
4
—a farcical take-off on the book of Genesis which offers a contemporary slant to the story of the Creation.
The Garro play, being the only purely Mexican of the group, is available in a full English translation. The-three Chicano works are written in what has been linguistically termed “code-switching,”
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a natural blend of both English and Spanish which reflects the spoken idiom of millions of Chicanos. I have enlisted the aid of several non-Spanish speaking friends in order to elicit their responses to these dual-language plays and am convinced that the language barrier has not hindered their understanding of the basic themes and moods. Both
Los Vendidos
and
La Raza Pura
contain a sprinkling of Spanish throughout, the latter at one point incorporating a long poem in Spanish. Code-switching in
El Jard’n
is much more evident. However, the flavor of the Spanish comes across clearly—for those non-Spanish speaking readers—due to the playwright’s skillful handling of the English responses in the dialogue, the similarity of many Spanish words to English, and in some instances, direct translations in the text.
For example:.
Dios: (Voice) Soy la voz de Dios. I have been speaking to mis hijos since the first hombre appeared on earth. His name was Adán and he lived in El Jard’n and he had a ruca named Eva who was rather coquetona .¿Se acuerdan?
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Therefore, I feel that these plays can be used by Spanish and non-Spanish speakers alike. In fact, many of the Spanish words are specific to Chicanos, and even the Puerto Rican students who perused these plays with me were unfamiliar with certain expressions. The terms will be listed as an activity in the section on
Los Vendidos
as an interesting cross-cultural example of regional differences.
An historical approach is important for appreciating the contemporary literature of any culture; therefore, at this point in the unit, I am including background information to enhance teachers’ and students’ understanding of the four 20th century pieces selected.
Since the present border between the U.S. and Mexico—the Rio Grande—was not established until 1848 when Mexican forces were defeated and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo proclaimed an end to the Mexican-American War declared two years earlier, we must keep in mind that the territory we now know as Texas, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado belonged to Mexico until it was ceded to the U.S. in return for $15 million.
We can, therefore, divide the development of this drama into two stages, the pre-Columbian to present in Mexico on the one hand, and post-1848 Chicano on the other. Before beginning this historical presentation, it seems appropriate at this time to define “Chicano.” “Mexican-American,” “Hispano,” and “Spanish-American” were used interchangeably in the literature before the relatively recent arrival of the term. According to Cecil Robinson, the expression itself is a matter of controversy, its origin debated among the Chicanos themselves. One creditable version is that it originated among Indian groups in Chihuahua as an elision of the word “Mexicano.” From there, allegedly, it was taken up by Anglos in the border regions and used toward Mexican-Americans in an abusive or patronizing manner.
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Fernando Pe–alosa suggests another possible negative source of “Chicano” in the sense of “trick.” Note that the English work “chicanery,” like the Spanish one, is derived from the middle low German word “schikken” by way of French.
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However, with the dawning of the age of political militancy in the 1960’s, “Chicano” acquired a positive connotation. Political activists began using the term proudly to identify themselves with their Mexican Indian ancestry.