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Theatre of the Borderlands: Conflict, Violence, and Healing by Iani del Rosario Moreno

2016; Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Kansas; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ltr.2016.0079

2161-0576

Noe Montez,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Reviewed by: Theatre of the Borderlands: Conflict, Violence, and Healing by Iani del Rosario Moreno Noe Montez Moreno, Iani del Rosario. Theatre of the Borderlands: Conflict, Violence, and Healing. Lexington, 2015: 289 pp. During recent decades, a group of playwrights has built theatrical careers and reputations along the northern border of Mexico, giving birth to the Teatro del Norte, a collective of dramatists bound together by geographic, political, historical, and economic ties to a liminal space where Mexican culture and US influences converge. Iani Moreno posits that as a result of the authors’ lived experience in this fragmented and contested environment, an emergent theatrical voice has emerged, united in a shared visual and linguistic aesthetic that serves as the object of study for her monograph Theatre of the Borderlands. Moreno’s text is divided into six chapters, each of which explores several recent plays that address specific populations and major social themes born of the politics and social conditions faced by those who reside and work along the US-Mexico border. The author features playwrights who have received significant critical attention, such as Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda and Hugo Salcedo, along with other, lesser-known dramatists. Chapter I, “Invisible Journeys to the Land of the Free,” discusses theatrical representations of immigrant journeys towards the United States, underscoring the historical and socioeconomic conditions that lead to transnational border crossings and the precarity of such endeavors. Chapters II and III explore tensions between borderland communities and the Church. “The Indigenous World: A Theatre of Resistance” considers plays that deal with the treatment of indigenous communities along the borderlands. The dramatists reassess and revise historical perceptions of the numerous tribes who lived along the US-Mexico border and their oftentimes fraught relationships with religious groups and colonizing entities who engaged in acts of imperialist oppression. “The Desert Voice that Clamors for Popular Saints [End Page 294] and Miraculous Souls” centers on contemporary theatrical performances that venerate folk saints who have been imagined as miracle workers among marginalized border populations. Moreno turns towards contemporary political concerns in her next two chapters. “Narcoteatro: An Aesthetic of Fear” investigates play scripts that depict cartel violence and narco culture. The author focuses on visual and textual aesthetics that make the full scope of the drug war’s brutality evident to theater-going audiences. In “The Ciudad Juárez Tragedy: Maquiladora Dreams and City Demons,” she discusses theatrical works that treat the sexual violence and collective trauma inflicted on women who live in the infamous border town. Moreno writes of theatermakers who blame neoliberalist free trade policies for the ongoing femicides in addition to authors who seek to remember those who have been murdered or kidnapped. Theatre of the Borderlands concludes with Chapter VI, “Tijuana: A Journey to Paradox,” in which the border city is imagined by theatre artists as a liminal space in which political ideologies and transient cultures collide. The plays featured in this chapter depict Tijuana’s past and present, speaking to stereotypes and contradictions that originated in the 1800s and remain in place in the early 21st century. Moreno writes for an audience seeking sociological, political, historical, and economic contexts for the emergence of Teatro del Norte playwrights. Although More-no’s bibliography lacks extensive theoretical readings in migration and border studies, as well as closer analyses of the plays included in this monograph, the author mitigates these exclusions by providing valuable information about US and Mexico diplomatic relations, historical events, geography, and the financial tensions that have shaped Northern Mexico’s dramaturgy. Additionally, she provides insight into the playwriting process through interviews with several of the dramatists whom she writes about in her text. Scholars of Mexican cultural studies and history will benefit from her exploration of key plays written during the past twenty-five years. Theatre of the Borderlands serves as a necessary contribution to contemporary Mexican theatre studies and as an introduction to several notable playwrights of the region. Noe Montez Tufts University Copyright © 2016 Center of Latin American Studies