Research on Chicano background and plays - Essay Example

1Chicano is a word for a Mexican American referring to US born Americans of Mexican ancestry's opposed to Mexican natives living in the United s. Irrespective of their generational status Chicanos associate their culture to the indigenous people of North America and to the nation of Aztlan. Raymund Paudes uses the term Chicano to refer to people of Mexican ancestry who have resided permanently in the United States for a prolonged period. Chicanos can be native born citizens or Mexican born immigrants who have adapted to life in the US. According to Helicon publishing, Chicano theatre is the Mexican American community theatre movement, notably the Teatro or Campesino founded by Luis Valdez, the father of Chicano theater in California in 1965 who was also responsible for the first festival of Chicano theatre in 1970. 2 Chicano theatre focuses on themes of identity, discrimination, culture and history, with an emphasis on validating the Mexican American experience or Chicano culture in the United States. It is often associated with the social and cultural claims of the Chicano movement. Chicanos use their theatre as a vehicle to express their feelings and represent themselves, and is often a voice of social critique and protest. Other important themes include the experience of migration, and the situation of living between two languages. Chicano literature may be written in either English or Spanish, or even in a combination of the two "Spanglish" .Politically too Chicano culture has focused on the question of the border and the ways in which Chicanos straddle or cross that border. 3The United Farm Workers of America (UFW) is a labor union that evolved in 1962 from unions founded by Csar Chvez, Philip Vera Cruz, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong. This union was initially a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance. It changed almost overnight to that of a union of farmworkers., It was the result of the National Farm Workers Association's (NFWA) striking in support of the mostly Filipino farm workers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by Larry Itliong in Delano, California who had initially organized a grape strike on September 8, 1965. Aware of their common goals and methods and recognizing the strengths of the coalition formation, the NFWA and the AWOC, jointly formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966.[1] "This organization eventually became the United Farm Workers and launched a boycott of table grapes that, after five years of struggle, finally won a contract with the major grape growers in California." Thousands of lettuce workers were brought by the union in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys and orange workers in Florida employed by subsidiaries of Coca- Cola. The principles of non-violence exhorted by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr were openly adopted by the union. The next major campaign launched in the orange fields in 1973 when a deal between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the growers nearly destroyed it. The Teamsters were endowed with the right to represent the workers who had been members of the UFW by contracts that the growers signed. The retail grocery industry faced an onslaught of strikes, lawsuits and boycotts, including secondary boycotts launched by the UFW. The union then found itself struggling to regain lost members in the lettuce field which it however never fully recovered in terms of strength, due to incompetent management of the hiring halls it had established that favored some workers over others. A number of UFW members were killed on the picket line owing to violent battles in the fields. The violence led the state in 1975 to find a solution for these adversities by founding an administrative agency, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, to enforce a law modeled on the National Labor Relations Act that would help channel such disputes into more peaceful forms. El Teatro Campesino was the cultural wing of the United Farm Workers union that drew from the lives of its audience in the bean fields of California's central valley. The pioneering actors were all farm workers who enacted events inspired by the lives of their audience. Early performances were on flat bed trucks in the middle of the fields in Delano., California. Today, the theatre is situated in San Juan Bautista. Luis Valdez, a Chicano was the founder and initial director of the troupe, who attended San Jose State University, and worked briefly with the San Francisco mime troupe and returned to Delano to found the troupe. He later gained fame for his play Zoot Suit which was produced on Broadway . Chicano Theatre had a pointed political mission of fighting for human dignity of the farm workers in their struggles and had a radical activist theory according to Carl Heyward in "El Teatro Campesino: An Interview with Luis Valdez." During the phenomenal success of Zoot Suit, Valdez observed that 3 "until we had the artists who could express what the people (farmworkers) were feeling and saying, we wouldn't really register politically. Art gives us the tools of that expression." (Carl Heyward in "El Teatro Campesino: An Interview with Luis Valdez.") It is a theatre that gives full expression to social, political and cultural perceptions. It is rooted in the streets of America, early California history, Mayan/ Aztec mythology and Mexican folklore and spiritualism. Teatro Campesino's early performances drew from a variety of sources, such as commedia dell'arte, Spanish religious dramas adapted for teaching Mission Indians, Mexican folk humor, a century-old tradition of Mexican performances in California, and Aztec and Maya sacred ritual dramas.] They began by entertaining the farm workers, and within a year of their founding began to tour to raise funds for the striking farm workers. By 1967, their themes included aspects of Chicano culture that went beyond the fields to include education, the Vietnam War, indigenous roots, and racism.[3]They moved their headquarters to San Juan Bautista in 1971 and adapted traditional religious plays La Virgen del Tepeyac and La Pastorela for Christmas celebrations. Following is a synopsis of 4Las Dos Cara Del Patroncito: "The Farmworker greets the audience and explains how he has been brought from Mxico to scab in the grape fields. His Patroncito (dear boss), wearing a yellow pig mask, drives up in an imaginary limousine. Patroncito wants the Farmworker to work harder and shows him how. Patroncito describes his love for his Mexican workers, and the Farmworker keeps trying to shine his boss' shoes. Charlie (la jura or "rent-a-fuzz"), apelike, starts to attack the Farmworker, but Patroncito sends him back to the road to watch for union organizers. The Farmworker agrees to everything said against the strikers and to the treatment he is receiving. The Patroncito laments his own riches as a burden, revealing that sometimes he would like to be a Mexican, without worries. As a game, he exchanges roles with the Farmworker, who rapidly assumes the dominant position. Charlie returns, unaware of the game that has become serious, and drags the Patroncito off to whip him. Doffing the pig mask, the Farmworker addresses the audience. He will give back the house, land, car to the boss-but he will keep the cigar." 5Similar to the Chicano Campesino is the Vietnam Campesino(1970) is a complex acto relating to several issues including the need to protect farm workers from pesticides sprayed in the fields, the disadvantages Chicanos faced with respect to the draft and the problems of maintaining an effective boycott against non union grapes that the defense department was buying for the military. The Vietnam Campesino recognized the common enemy as the American military agricultural business establishment. Vietnam Campesino draws parallel with the conditions of farm workers in the US on the one side of the stage and the peasants of Vietnam on the other. Quoting General Defense, comparing the Vietnamese peasants on one side of the stage and the Chicano/a farm workers on the other, points at the Vietnamese peasants and says, "Farm workers just like them farm workers Campesinos just like them campesinosPoor people just like them poor people and we've been killing them for ten years. They aren't people, they're gooksthey deserve to die." The USA may be a considered a melting pot or a multi cultural environment but the truth is that racism prevails and there is prejudice towards growth and progress of indigenous and ethnic people. End notes: 1. "Essays on Teaching the American Literatures." From the Health Anthology Newsletter.20.Nov.2008. 2. Raymund Paredes. "Teaching Chicano Literature. An Historical Approach." University of California Los Angeles. 20. Nov.2008 3 Carl Heyward. "EL Teatro Campesino: An Interview with Luis Valdez." 20. Nov.2008. 4. "Las Dos Cara Del Patroncito." 20. Nov.2008. 5. Small -Cast One- Act Guide Online. "Vietnam Campesino." 20. Nov.2008. Read More