Pilsen was the backstage for the founding of three Chicano theaters in the 1970s and two other theaters later in the 1980s and 1990s.
Long before Chicago could boast of having Latino theater companies with a cast of Latino professional actors, these five street theaters taken as a whole set the stage for the further expansion of Latino theater in the city.
Teatro del Barrio
One of the first theaters was El Teatro del Barrio which was founded by Jesus “Chuy” Negrete in the early 1970s and included as participants his three sisters: Rosa, Juanita and Santa Negrete. It also had other participants such as Lalo Cervantes, Rogelio “Smiley” Rojas, who would later join El Teatro Campesino in California, Rosalia Chico, Felipe Ruiz, and Juana Guzmán.
This theater can be correctly called a Chicano theater group as it existed during the height of the Chicago Movement and performed actos, or skits, written and developed by Luis Valdez, who founded El Teatro Campesino in 1965 in San Juan Bautista, California.
Valdez, a graduate of San Jose State University, had worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe before joining the struggle of César Chávez to unionize the farmworkers or campesinos, thus the name Teatro Campesino.
Valdez said he founded his theater to popularize the issues facing farmworkers as they began the fight for better working conditions. His theater performed the skits on flatbed trucks and his “actors” were farmworkers or student volunteers who donned signs around their necks to help identify the characters for the audience.
In the same vein, Negrete founded his theater to raise consciousness in the barrios and local colleges. His concern and that of many like him, at the time was to spread the idea of fighting for social justice for Chicanos or Mexican Americans in the United States.
Two of the skits that El Teatro del Barrio often performed were No Saco Nada de la Escuela and The American Dream, which were written by Valdez.
In No Saco Nada de la Escuela the action takes place in a classroom where a white teacher is teaching minority students. She tries to Americanize all of them especially a Chicano named Francisco.
The teacher says his name is now “Frankie” but he refuses and says he is “Francisco or Panchito,” but not Frankie.
Later we see Esperanza, a Mexican American, who does not identity with her people anymore and who now says her name is “Hope.”
“Hey Esperanza, ya no te acuerdas de mí,” Francisco tells her and she responds, “I don’t associate with Mex-icans! And don’t call me no Esperrranzza. My name is Hopi!”
Well you get the idea. The teacher proceeds with the class and the rest of the play, which lasted about an hour, deals with the school system’s attempt to rob minority students of their identities and heritage.
The American Dream is about a Chicano who falls and loses his memory and then meets a white hippie, a black militant and a military recruiter who each tries to tell him he is one of them until at the end he discovers his real self and proclaims himself a Chicano.
For example, a female Hippie on LSD meets Juan and she tries to tell him he is a Hippie, too, and offers him acid or LSD. She also teaches the awkward Juan Raza to make the peace sign and say “Peace, Love” as he goes on an acid “trip.”
Well you get the point. Toward the end, the character meets a military recruiter who tells him, he (Juan Raza), is “red, white and blue” and teaches him how to march and salute with a rifle.
At the end Juan recovers his memory and denies any of those roles and says, “I’m no Hippie, I am not black, and I’m not any G.I. Joe, I am a Chicano and I’m going to fight for my community and my people.”
At the beginning and end of each theater performance Chuy Negrete often played Chicano movement songs such as “Yo Soy Chicano” or Huelga songs from the United Farmworker’s struggle.
These performances took place in community halls, in schools and at outdoor rallies held in places such as Harrison Park in Pilsen. Even though Negrete and most of his cast were from South Chicago, many of the performances were in Pilsen as it was a hub of political activity then.
Compania Trucha
In 1975 I founded Compania Trucha, a Chicano theater group, with the help of Héctor Gamboa, whom we had recruited from Chicago so he could attend the University of Iowa where I was the organizer of the Chicano Student Union and the Chicano-Indian American Cultural Center.
At Iowa City, among other Chicano movement activities, we had begun to do Chicano theater to mobilize and raise the consciousness of the students, some of whom were from small towns and were not yet aware of the Chicano Movement.
Gamboa left after only one year but when I graduated and came back to Chicago, we met again in Pilsen and began to informally do skits around issues such as education, reclaiming one’s identity and barrio control of the local institutions.
I got the idea of the name Trucha because as Chicanos we were into calo or Chicano slang. In the barrio some people would say “Ponte trucha carnal” meaning get with it, dude, and wise up. So we became Compania Trucha.
Compania Trucha was unique in many ways. We performed only our own original material which we created collectively. We abhorred the Anglo “star” system in which one talented writer creates the play and another talented guy is the director, then a talented actor is the lead and so on. The whole idea then of doing theater for fame or money was abhorrent to us.
We use to meet once a week during the evening at Casa Aztlán to plan, develop, create and rehearse our actos or skits. We thought of ourselves as a Chicano Movement theater serving the needs of its working people. We printed a poster showing a line of braceros and the words “Compania Trucha: A Theater of the Chicano People.”
The other members of our troupe were María Saucedo, who died in a fire in Pilsen in 1981, María Aguilar, Cookie Ramírez, who was an improvised social worker at Casa Aztlán, José Murillo, Gloria Pantoja, and José Gaspar, who is now a TV reporter in California.
Other members also included Pat González, Victoria Pérez and María Caraves.
Our theater worked and performed without interruption from our founding in 1975 to 1980. Some of our pieces were The Lion and los Crickets, Beto’s Place Cantina, United Sandwich Company and many others.
The topics of our work ranged widely but centered on the oppression of Chicanos by the system at large. Some theater skits had to do with the bad treatment of Mexican workers in factories. We also touched on the domination of Mexican women by male Mexicans. Other issues included the right of Chicanos to a quality education and against displacement from the barrio.
Healthcare then was also a topic for us and we use to proclaim that “la salud es un derecho-no un privilegio.” In fact, in 1975 we participated in a sit-in at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Hospital after Magdalena García, a lab technician, was fired. Twenty-two people from Pilsen were arrested after we refused to leave the president’s office.
As Compania Trucha, we performed inside the president’s office as many sat there since morning until the cops arrested us for disturbing the peace. After a year of court dates, they dropped the charges.
In our work we also touched on living conditions in the barrio where immigrant workers were charged stiff rents for deteriorated living quarters. In the skit Beto’s Place Cantina we portrayed how low-dive cantinas exploit workers with liquor and women who take their hard-earned dollars.
One of our most creative and genial pieces was The Lion and los Crickets which we adapted from the well-known children’s fable.
In the plot a lion is terrorizing a cricket community or village and they do not know how to cope or fight back. In this case the crickets are all Chicanos dressed with stripped tee shirts and little yellow antennas on their heads.
The lion, with an improvised mane made up of a red wig, was none other than Uncle Sam who was dressed in red, white and blue. The lion would come to the cricket village while they slept or worked to take away their food, destroy their houses or displaced them and/or spy on the female crickets as they bathed.
One day the village elder gets everyone together for a meeting to decide how to confront the lion. They are afraid because he is more powerful than them. They throw some ideas around until a brave little cricket (Cookie Ramirez) says he is willing to jump into the lion’s ear and tickle him until he goes crazy or scratches himself to death.
As the lion sleeps, the brave little cricket jumps into his ear and the lion, unable to get him out of there, begins to scratch his ear off. Finally the little cricket jumps out as the lion bleeds and leaves the village.
The idea behind this piece was to transmit the message that in order to resist oppression or face problems, a community needs to get organized and fight back. We needed to do it without sounding preachy and doctrinaire. So we did it with a simple story and with humor and using English for the lion and Spanish and calo (slang) for the crickets so the audience could identify with them.
There were many other skits that we did, which even though we called them skits were really plays which lasted from a half hour to an hour or more. One time they even cut our microphone off at a performance at La Fiesta del Sol as we were doing a skit about an injured worker at a supermercado in the barrio during which the owner had refused to pay for his medical care.
The Consul General of Mexico, who was sitting in the audience, promptly got up and left. The audience, however, was yelling “Déjenlos, déjenlos!”
We used to perform in union and church halls, organizations, centers such Casa Aztlán, and store fronts and movie houses such as El Atlantic and El Villa, (both now gone). Also at universities and at political rallies outside of Pilsen for varied causes such as Puerto Rican independence, women’s rights, and against U.S. intervention in Central America.
We sometimes performed with El Grupo Latino, a Puerto Rican group from the North Side, who used to sing protest songs and whose members were Sigisfrido Avilés, Mario García and Roberto López.
We used to also perform at times with a women’s theater group from the North Side called Bread and Roses Theater, who were very conscious and very militant just as we were.
One year we went to the Midwest Teatro Organization (MITO) festival in Detroit where Compania Trucha received favorable reviews from other teatros who compared our work to the early work of Luis Valdez for its simplicity but at the same time they noted our highly developed politics-which other teatros lacked.
During our theater’s life we also worked with Los Mascarones, a theater group from México City, who visited Chicago and taught us some of their techniques especially about using choral poetry, which we tried at the end of one piece. We performed with them at El Cine Atlantic in La Villita.
We also worked with Teatro Triángulo from Venezuela who visited Chicago with their play Buffalo Bill en Credulilandia. After their brief stay in Chicago, they left but one of the members, Carlos Contreras, remained in Chicago on a work visa and held weekly workshops with us teaching us many things such as pantomime, voice projection, theater movement and other techniques.
We worked, too, with Carlos Morton, a Chicano playwright who visited our rehearsals for some time at Casa Aztlán. He wanted us to do one of his plays but we opted to continue with our own material.
Compania Trucha disbanded around 1980. I myself had left about a year earlier due to “cultural work” burn-out, if such a thing exists. I was exhausted. I had been active in the Chicano Movement since 1970.
Teatro Proletario
Teatro Proletario is a theater that was born in Pilsen in 1975 as part of Centro de Acción Social Autónomo-Hermandad General de Trabajadores (CASA-HGT). Its headquarters were at a store front at 19th and Throop, and it met twice a week for about three years from 1975 to 1978.
The repertoire of Teatro Proletario was varied but concentrated on skits dealing with workers and immigrants, according to Bernardino Echeverria, 58, who was one of the original Teatro Proletario members.
This theater actually began under another name, Teatro del Pueblo, and was led for one year by its director Jesús Mendoza. A year later as a new director took over, it was renamed Teatro Proletario.
The new director had worked with Teatro Zopilote in Mexico City and his name was Óscar, whose last name escapes Echeverria for the moment.
This Pilsen group developed a skit about an immigration raid and told about things that people without documents could do to protect their rights.
Another work created by this local theater, which had about 15 members, was a skit about the heroes and historic figures of the Mexican Revolution. During this time of cultural re-awakening, this teatro wanted to connect local Mexican immigrants with their historical roots, according to Echeverria.
A third memorable skit developed by Teatro Proletario was called La Aguilita y el Zopilote and it presented two boxers in the ring and a narrator.
The “Aguilita” represented the immigrant workers and their capacity to get organized. The “Zopilote” represented companies and corporations, according to Echeverria.
As the two boxers fought in the ring, a narrator was describing the gains each side was making in this never ending struggle.
Echeverria still recalls those days as a member of Teatro Proletario which he says was in the style of street theater: mobile and light enough to travel anywhere.
“The idea behind our theater was to give a message to our community and people in general,” said Echeverria. “My participation in this theater led me to become an activist in the community.”
This theater made presentations at Cine Villa, which was at 18th and Loomis, where now a parking lot is located, and at CASA-HGT on Throop and 19th Street.
The theater also made presentations in local parks such as Harrison Park and Dvorak Park as well as at the University of Illinois at Chicago which was then known as Circle Campus. After three years the theater disbanded.
Teatropello
The 1980s presented me with the opportunity to help to create another local theater after a group of youth from Instituto Del Progreso Latino visited Casa Aztlán. There I met Jorge Catalán who after I told him I had experience with Chicano theater said he and the other students wanted to start one.
During our initial meeting, Martha E. Magdaleno, a female member of the group, suggested the new theater group be named Teatropello, a play on the Spanish words Te atropello meaning “I will run you down.” So Teatropello it was.
During this time the war in El Salvador was raging so one of the plays (by now we were calling them plays as the terminology of the Chicano Movement was slowly fading away) had to do with the military kidnapping of civilians and mothers who were unable to find their disappeared sons in Central America.
In fact to mark our first anniversary as a theater group we organized a Cultural Event in Solidarity with El Salvador at the Boys and Girls Club at 25th Street and Sacramento in Little Village. Besides us, we had as guests the group Chispa and poetry by Carlos Cortez and Carlos Cumpian. We, of course, performed our theater skits.
Teatropello did other plays having to do with life in the barrio and how the community needs to get organized to find social services. The theater lasted about two years as its members moved on seeking other school or work opportunities.
One of the most original and popular plays we did was called La Bachicha which we created collectively. The play dealt with the comic but serious problems faced by an immigrant who tries to survive in the city.
After many situations in which he is either exploited or denied services, he prays to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Afterwards as an unseen chorus sings “Hallelujah, hallelujah!” the Virgin of Guadalupe (an actress) rises above the curtain and tells him “¡Organízate, pendejo!”
Teatropello also organized a Festival de Verano Al Aire Libre at Harrison Park in Pilsen on July 11, 1980. Beside us, the cultural guests included María Saucedo who read poetry and Grupo Chispa (who were Chuy Negrete’s sisters) and Mexican, Bolivian and Brazilian folkloric groups. By then the consciousness was extending to other newly arrived immigrant groups.
The members of Teatropello, besides me, were: Nora Anzo, Malú Ortega, Higinio Briseño, Juan Carlos Bustamante, Jorge Catalán, Lalo Cervantes (who had been with Teatro del Barrio, which by then had folded), Rafael Dimas, Hilda Gamez, Martha Magdaleno, Dulce Gómez and Margarita Vázquez.
Teatropello performed in Pilsen and in Little Village but it did not last as long as either Teatro del Barrio or Compania Trucha. By then the Latino community was more into electoral politics and some of its leading figures were being integrated into the system. The “movement” had about run its course.
Teatro Callejero
A third theater group that I joined but had nothing to do with its founding was the popular Teatro Callejero of the mid-1990s.
One day I attended a rally for immigrants’ rights at Harrison Park and happened upon a theater doing a skit out in the open with a minimum of props. I learned its name was Teatro Callejero.
In their skit two “comadres”, who were actually two male actors dressed as females, meet in the street and start to chit chat about little things but then suddenly one brings up the topic of immigration raids.
Both talk at length about “La Migra” and one tells the other how people should protect their rights and how the community should opposed raids and deportations. Finally, after about 20 minutes, one of them says “Bueno, comadre, I have to go porque dejé los frijoles en la estufa!”
I thought it was funny and enlightening and I forgot about this teatro but during the next months I began to write a play called Año 2 Migra. It was about Governor Pete Wilson and Proposition 187 and his drive to blame immigrants, cuts social services and attack bilingual education in California.
One day Pipiltzin Rana Que Salta, an Aztec runner, informs Cuauhtémoc that a “white god named Pete Wilson wants to expel the Mexicans from California de volada!”
“¿De volada? De volada su abuela,” replies Cuauhtémoc, who decides to fight back and sends La Llorona on a midnight flight to find out if Wilson is really a god or a mere mortal.
On her return La Llorona informs Cuauhtémoc that Wilson is a mortal so Cuauhtémoc convenes a summit conference with other warrior chiefs who decide to organize a boycott of California. They will not export any more products from Mexico-Tenochtitlan to California such as “chocolate, tomates, aguacates” or, as one character says, “Tortilla chips for their Super Bowl” until the governor stops attacking all immigrants.
The play was interesting because the action takes place simultaneously in the present and the past.
In one scene Cuauhtémoc is watching a novela (soap opera) on TV called “Dos Mujeres y un Tlatoani” and in another he uses a Walkman to dance to rock music as his assistant joins in as the audience laughs.
After I wrote it I managed to get in touch with Susana Bañuelos, who was a founding member of Teatro Callejero. She then introduced me to the rest of the group which voted to put on the play.
We used to rehearse at Erie House even though some of us were from Pilsen or worked there. However, other members were from Brighton Park, others from Cicero and still others from the North Side. By this time the Mexicano/Hispano population was spreading further and further into the city.
Besides Susana Bañuelos, the other Teatro Callejero members were Ambrosio Martínez, Tim Bell, Claudia Bravo, Carlos Juárez, Raúl Casas, Mónica Andrade, Marco Chávez, Alejandra Ríos, Javier Martínez and I.
After two months of rehearsing we presented the play at several venues. On May 11, 1996 we premiered the play at Pilsen’s La Decima Musa and we even printed a program and tickets with the name of the play.
Later we also presented the play at the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana and also much later at a college near the University of Notre Dame in neighboring Indiana. We also did a presentation at Truman College.
The proceeds from the play were used to build a social center for youth in Chiapas for which reason some of the Callejero members traveled there.
Another skit that I wrote for Teatro Callejero was called Migra Mouse. This was around the time it was alleged that the Walt Disney Co. had contributed funds or donations to Governor Pete Wilson. Many Latino activists nationwide were upset.
In this skit, Migra Mouse is a racist mouse who extols children (the cast members dressed as kids) to hate and be afraid of all inmigrants. He also urges immigrants to speak English and to be “real Americans.”
As the year 2000 approached some of the members of Teatro Callejero, including myself, re-directed their energies to other cultural work, such as Danza Azteca, and the zany and very political Teatro Callejero, too, lowered its telón (curtain).
Learning by example
These five theater groups left their cultural footprint in Pilsen. They tried to teach, inspire and motivate by example.
Their tools were a desire to do theater, their own consciousness and awareness of common problems and a strong commitment to create social change.
While styles varied, some of them like Compania Trucha and Teatropello, had a sense of agit-prop, comedy and improv, particularly in the Mexican style of carpa or lower-class tents shows that entertained audiences in Mexico but also at times pointed out social problems.
The theaters described here were highly mobile with a minimum of props and equipment. Their props often included a simply curtain with their name, cardboard signs and clothing from resale shops to differentiate each character.
It is beside the point to say that these theaters operated with hardly any money. Sometimes they charged to perform but most often their performances were free to the community. What was important to them was that their message as cultural theater groups be heard in the community.
Think of these former groups as a “theater of the unwashed” with plenty of radical ideas and biting good humor to drive their political message home.
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Antonio Zavala. Journalist, lives in Pilsen. He studied journalism at University of California, Berkeley, and in Roosevelt University, Chicago. © Antonio Zavala, 2014. This piece may not be used without written permission from the author.
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