Homegrown revolution: Magdaleno Rose-Avila offers a historical perspective on the social action theater of Teatro Campesino.

When I was growing up in a farm-worker family in southeastern Colorado, I never thought one day I'd end up being el patron (the boss). But in 1994, I came full circle when I found myself bellowing at a group of underpaid day laborers to "hurry up." My hero and brother Cesar Chavez had died in 1993, and in his honor, the United Farm Workers organized a massive effort in 1995 to bring the organizing struggle again to Sacramento. We were retracing the 340-mile march he'd led in 1966 from Delano to Sacramento. The first march had been a historic pilgrimage by farm workers asking for an end to violence and recognition as a legitimate union. Back then, a young Chicano theater group had performed teatros (dramas) that talked about the plight of the workers and their vision of hope. They did this on the back of a flatbed truck stopping in towns along the route. This time around, it was my turn to take the stage playing the evil boss in a Teatro Campesino production. After many years as an organizer, I had to admit I loved being the villain.

Organizing is tough work. You have to be a tremendous speaker to enthrall and captivate the crowds day after day, week after week, and month after month. Like lots of veteran organizers, I found you could lose otherwise supportive folks if you always came off somber and serious about your causes. Too many rallies and marches have the same set up--banners, posters, flags, puppets, bull horns, buttons, chanting--and way too many speakers. With teatro, people laugh, sing, and enjoy a few moments of levity. Teatro is like a blood transfusion, a good bowl of chili, an energy bar--it gets the endorphins going in your heart and your spirit. It is easy to forget a speech but not a scene from a teatro play. This past week I attended a youth conference and watched students perform a good teatro on drugs. The youth were the most attentive that I had seen them be. They were on the edge of their seats listening, laughing, and in the end, cheering. The room came alive because of teatro.

El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers Theater) began in the late '60s as an organizing tool of the UFW, which gave comic relief to workers amidst the mounting tensions of a labor strike and ongoing organizing efforts. In the midst of a struggle, it offered new ways to educate the members and to re-energize all of them. This magical group was founded by the master of Chicano and campesino theater, director Luis Valdez. Valdez became better known by big city audiences when he directed Zoot Suit and La Bamba, but this theater group opened their acts in small rural towns with the express purpose of educating and activating the farm workers. Because of low overheads, Valdez could take his productions anywhere and to anyone.

Teatro Campesino began reaching out beyond the farm workers, and began performing at colleges, universities, and community centers first around California and then the country. They took the message of the union to the progressive movements, including the budding Chicano Movement. They opened up the imaginations of many, and soon small teatro groups were popping up all over. Teatro Campesino initiated a cultural renaissance in the Chicano community. For teatro, you didn't need a lot of lights or props; you just needed some good stories to tell and some enthusiastic actors. The theater was--and is to this day--of, by, and for the people. It was about their tragedies, their lives, their friends, their families, and their archenemies.

Most teatro groups begin with a core group of actors pulled directly from the affected community. Many have never performed in public. Together they develop the storyline, and they practice. They test their actos (skits) on a variety of local audiences and adjust the action to better get the message across. The more established groups have a core of performers, including musicians so that they can lead the group in songs and chants. But often one or more of the actors is purposefully unavailable. It is then that someone is plucked out of the community audience. The crowd who is familiar with the teatro group loves to see a new local face and watch them swim and sometimes sink. Many times the community yells out the titles of their favorite actos that they want to see performed.

Teatro is created with a basic message, with limited dialogue, minimal props, and exaggerated movements and expressions. The words are belted out in such a fashion that they are easily understood. The actors often have signs identifying their characters since there isn't a long time to develop the character. Often, masks are used. For example ,the half pig mask represents the boss, police, or any authority figure with pig-like habits. Repetition of a phrase gets the audience to adopt this phrase as theirs, and soon they are repeating the lines at home to have another chuckle about the teatro they have just seen. One teatro acto came up with a term for the super strike breaker or slave: "El Super Esclavo." Before you knew it, people in the community would tease each other saying, "Here comes El Super Esclavo," even when someone was just following orders of their spouse or boss.

In one acto, we portrayed the racism with which Chicano patients were treated at the local hospital, where they were often denied services. In the months to follow, we found more communities demanding medical service and calling for protests at the hospital.

Teatro Campesino brought a new and vibrant life to the struggle of the farm workers as they fought to obtain contracts. It made the workers understand why they had to continue organizing. On occasions, El Teatro had them booing the bad growers and the sellouts, cheering for the good guys, and laughing at all the crazy situations portrayed in the life of a worker and his boss. In a sort of politicized vaudeville, this over-the-top theater stereotyped everyone under the sun, making them more exaggerated and alive. And for a brief moment, we the workers could take a break, smile, laugh, jeer, and escape the difficulties of the movement. Soon we were back organizing and working, but now also dreaming of possibilities and laughing at situations from Teatro performances that portrayed serious conflicts we saw everyday in the fields.

I first saw a performance of Teatro Campesino in 1968 in Denver, Colorado, but I didn't get to know the actors until I joined the union as an organizer in 1970. Inspired by El Teatro and a San Francisco Mime Troupe performance I'd seen about racial stereotyping, I founded El Teatro del Valle (Theater of the Valley), the first teatro group in Colorado, along with a fellow organizer named Jim Zapf in 1968. Jim and I did the same thing that Luis had done. We took local actors and issues and made them come alive. It was some of the youth from the communities where we performed who later developed a much better group called Teatro de Ustedes (Your Theater), that took on the Vietnam War and other issues like welfare and racism in their skits.

The actos about the war portrayed a campesino going off to work in the name of the flag and being ordered to kill "gooks." Then the campesino meets a Vietnamese campesino--both workers in a war nobody wanted. Soon the Chicano campesino realizes that this Farm worker from Vietnam never ever called him a wetback or a greaser. Soon the two campesinos drop their weapons and decide not to fight each other.

In most places, Teatro de Ustedes was well received. We performed in vacant lots, parks, picket lines, student conferences, demonstrations, and prisons. The audiences loved our characters and the stories. We weren't telling them anything new--we were just adding some color and humor to life as they knew it.

But sometimes we were heckled, and once we were actually kicked, beaten, and thrown off the stage by some young drunk Chicanos who we later discovered had just returned from the war. When we regrouped backstage, one of the actors, Frank Trujillo, quipped, "Well, I guess they got our message about the war." We all broke up laughing.

We soon began to recognize that when you challenge a myth or a lie, the response might not always be polite, but at least you got a response. And once we moved people from apathy, they were more likely to listen, learn, and take action. It is not easy to make the decision to take action when it might affect you and your family's livelihood and well-being. But having a good teatro gives people the courage to make that important decision. It burns images and ideas into their minds and hearts, giving them reason to join the struggle.

As theater groups become more established, they generally are less available to go out to the barrios and the streets and perform their works where the people are living. And this is a tragedy: that with success and stability, groups minimize their performances in and authentic interaction with the community. In the best-case scenario, street theater perpetuates itself by casting local extroverts who have never acted, but who understand and can portray oppression and abuse. These local actors who come out of the fields and streets are the best since they help to keep the message honest. It's a living theater that encourages actors to interact with the audience and build on their reactions. Because the audience participates, you know when it's working.

Several street theater groups have continued in the Teatro Campesino tradition training new actors and going out into communities to stir up the people. Although there hasn't been a teatro renaissance in recent years, there is much to challenge in today's political climate and teatro is a most creative way to bring this to communities of color.

Songs, poetry, paintings, graffiti, and street theater bring life to a movement. That is why dictators often begin their reign by shutting down the artists. It is the first human right they take away and that gives us all the more reason to keep it alive.

Magdaleno Rose-Avila is a native of Colorado and a longtime defender of civil and human rights. He is currently working on a book about his poetry and his life.