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Show Review El Teatro Campesino depicts Chicano life, struggle, victories BY BILL WILSON As one who is involved in trying try-ing to get it on, it is really great to watch a group that is right on and that's how El Teatro Campesino Cam-pesino (Farmworkers Theatre) has to be described Right On! Growing out of the Delano grape strike, El Teatro has a message that reaches from the fields of Delano to the barrios of all major cities and it comes across loud and strong VTVA LA RAZA! From the opening welcome to the occupied territory of Mexico to the closing Viva La Raza, El Teatro tells the story of a race of proud people struggling for survival in a society that has tried in every way possible to strip them of that pride, a society that tells them they can't speak their native na-tive tongue because it is un-Ameri can (which really means it is not the imported European way.) "Our theatre comes from reality," real-ity," says Luis Valdez, El Teatro's director. ' Reality is the racism which Is felt in every aspect of Chicano life. From the fields of Delano to the fields of Vietnam racism runs rampant, as is shown in El Teatro's Te-atro's first acto, 'The Vietnamese Farmworker.' The troupe members mem-bers show how the same techniques tech-niques used by "General Defense" to fight the peasants In Vietnam are used by the growers to keep the farmworkers in the United States from receiving decent wages wag-es and housing. The Military-Industrial Complex is a real thing to the grape strikers strik-ers since the Defense Dept. increased in-creased its supply of grapes 350 per cent during the grape boycott to try to outweigh the effects that the boycott was having on the growers. Tokenism and sell-outs were dealt with in the second acto entitled, en-titled, The 'Sell-Out'. Looking for a brown face for Reagan's administration, admin-istration, a secretary comes to Sancho's Used Mexican Lot. Asked to choose between The Standard Farmworker, Pachuco, 1910 Revolutionary Revo-lutionary or Mexican-American models, the secretary chooses the Mexican-American model only to find after he is paid for that the models the only playing and that the dealer is an inhumane robot. After intermission the film, "1 Am Joaquin," a film depicting Chicano history, was shown to further fur-ther illustrate the reality of history his-tory which is not taught in the schools. The history of a proud people fighting for what is theirs. The whole educational system was the next target of El Teatro's satire. Tracing the education of six students from kindergarten to college, the troupe shows what it is like to be thrown out of school j for not speaking English and the , compromising and bootlicking that has to be done to make it through. All this sounds dull in print -yet there was a spirit that u Teatro Campesino has t h a t cannot can-not be captured in words. A joy, a happiness, a feeling that say we are going to win, because our cause is just and right. It may be a hard struggle, but then we've been struggling an our lives. ! It is this spirit that gets thrJ to the predominantly white au ence and makes them laugh at themselves. Talking of the recent -jUgg j of the grape strike, Luis va i said, "It was a victory f needed a victory. But watching El Teatro's pe. onn,t one gets the feeling Itat tj be the last victory, and P ' this won't be the last v. t d Teatro's Campesino to Uta.. |