Dangerous Border Crossers

Guillermo Gomez-Pena

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415182362
• eBook ISBN: 9781134673858
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

This anthology of Gómez-Peña's performance chronicles, diary entries, poems, essays, and texts, sheds an extraordinary light on the life and work of this migrant provocateur.

PERFORMANCE DOCUMENTS
PART 1

Supernintendo Ranchero
excerpt from BORDERscape 2000

(Opera singer sings Mozart intertwined with a soundbed of Japanese techno music. Roberto Sifuentes stands on top of a metallic pyramid. He wears a laboratory coat and teched-out glasses, and speaks in a computer-processed, mechanical voice. Guillermo Gómez-Peña enters dressed as El Mad Mexterminator, riding a motorized wheelchair. He moves across the stage in a mechanical, video-game-like pattern, responding to gestural commands from Sifuentes.)

RS San Francisco, March of 99. Dear Chicano colleagues, welcome to BORDERscape 2000, part three of a performance trilogy. Allow me to introduce to you the very first prototype: a beta version of an imperfect Mexican. This cyborg still has a sentimental mind and a political consciousness. He failed the test for robotic migrant workers, and still longs for his homeland. Eventually when we manage to get the Mexican bugs out of him, we will create a Chicano, the vato uberalis, the next step on the evolutionary scale. Speak Mexi-cyborg!! Repent yourself!! Use voice #53 and please stick to the script.

GGP (processed voice #1): No, I won’t cru-ci-fy myself to protest la migra no more.

RS You can’t repeat a performance or it would become theater.

GGP No, I swear,
I won’t box with a hanging chicken for art’s sake…
nor will I exhibit myself inside a gilded cage
as an endangered species or an androgynous wrestler/shaman.

RS Why Mad Mex Frankenstein?

GGP I’m just gonna be a poet for a while.

RS Then be a poet. Stick to the spoken word material. Go!! Go North!!

GGP So I continue my trek north
like a compulsive explorer
El Marco Pollo de Tijuana,
El Vasco de Gama de Aztlán
ever looking for a new island, a new performance stage
to spill my beans, my bleeding tripas,
expose my crevasses, my wounded penis
in the name of ex-pe-ri-men-ta-tion.

RS Now you wish to be a performance artist again?

GGP Not exactly.

(GGP intersperses “no’s” through following text)

RS So Vato, give us some blood,
show us your piercings, your prosthetics,
eat your green card or burn your bra
but get fuckin’ real!

GGP no, no, ni madres.

RSWhy?

GGPCause I’m giving up, right now, in front of you.

RSOh god, you fuckin’ martyr!

GGPI willingly turn myself in to my inner border patrol three agents are present tonight come on, get me!!
this is your golden chance culeros I su-rren-der to my own darkest fears.

RS You’re not responding to my performance commands. You were much better when you were just trying to be a poet. Go back to poetry. Synthesize an entire cosmology into one burning sentence. Go!

GGP Fear is the foundation of your identity (he points at someone in audience).

RS What a fuckin’ assumption.

GGPTo be Mexican is a felony not a misdemeanor…

RS Hey better, chido, punchy.

GGP versus ser pocho es still una afrenta binacional.

RSYou are using Spanish unnecessarily. Shift accent.

GGP(Texan accent) I’m fully aware that your ears are tired of listening to so many foreign languages
(He speaks in “gringo tongues,” interspersed with recognizable English words)

RS Stop! Next dialect!

GGP Hey, that’s how English sounded to me when I was a kid.

RS So upgrade yourself!

GGP Such linguistic vertigo you have to endure daily
I mean, you can’t even communicate with your maid
or your gardener,
and then you come to California
(gringoñol)
& carrramba mamazita!
the artist speaks Spanglish and gringoñol
(mispronounced Spanish)
io hablou el idiouma del criminal, il drogadictou y la piuta
e’ cuandouu io hablou tu muérres un poquitou mas.

RS English only, pinche wetback!

GGP I mean, 23 states in America have embraced English only

California just abolished bilingual education and I dare to talk to you in Spanglish? Que poca ma…

RS Good boy…you are assimilating.
What is your prime directive? Explain yourself.

GGP To you or to the audience?

RS To the audience.

GGP Dear citizens of nothingness:

this is a desperate attempt by a dying performance artist
to recapture the power of the spoken word
in the year of virtual despair and victorious whiteness.

RSStop! Now, do something more kinetic, more defiant.
Don’t you have a fuckin choreographer?

GGPSara!!!

RSMusic!!

GGP Sara!!!

RSWe need some hip music
cd #3; track 2, take 1: Japanese tea house lounge. Go.

(Lights transition to lounge look.)

RS Yeah! Now, stand up & dance. (Repeats three times.)

GGP stops wheelchair and attempts to stand up but fails. He eventually succeeds
in standing. GGP dances cheesy disco & twist, then falls down on his knees.

RS Stop the music. This is terryfying
Who do you think you are? an MTV Latino?

(GGP crawls back onto the chair while speaking. Lights return to normal and
sound goes back to techno music.)

GGP El Mariachi with a biiiiiig moooouth.

RS Not anymore carnal

.

GGP Mexi-cyborg el extra-extra-terrestre.

RS Not quite yet. You wish.

GGP El immigrant bizarro con su mente explosiva
y expansiva al servicio de la fragmentación político-poética.

RS State your function or lose your greencard.

GGP To you or to the audience?

RS To the audience.

GGP My normal state of being, carnal,
is to die for you, cause after all these years
I’m still imprisoned inside this historical purgatory.

RS Still obsessed with history in the year 2000?

GGPYes.

RSThat’s cute.

GGPDo you remember the terms of the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty? do you fuckin’ remem…

RS Can anyone answer this pathetic poet?

GGP Est-ce que vous êtes illégal?

L’illégalité est à la mode, n’est-ce pas?

RS OK, you win this time. Let’s talk about illegality…Go!

(GGP moves to extreme downstage and looks into audience. House lights come up. After each question, RS intersperses improvised replies.)

GGP Are there any illegal immigrants in the audience?

People who once were illegal?

What about people who have had sex with an illegal alien?

Can you describe in detail their genitalia?

Are there people here who have hired illegal immigrants for domestic, or artistic purposes?

Yessss! To do what exactly?

How much did you pay them?

How did you feel about that?

Thanks for your sincerity… Now, have any of you ever fantasized about being from another race or culture?

Which one?

Black, Indian?

Native American? Mexican?

RS Boring. Cambio de canal: give me burning sentence #2.

(House lights down)

GGP Ser emigrante en America ya es un acto ilegal.

RS Translation please?

GGP Just to be different is potentially an illegal act
one strike & you’re out!
punishable with deportation without trail,
and retroactive to 10 years.

RS That’s too…technical

GGP
I mean, to be excluded from a national project
at a time when all nation states are collapsing
is not an extraordinary act of heroism
or literary fiction, ask the Welsh or the Irish, man…

RS That’s too fuckin’ heavy to deal with right now.

This is the year 2000;

it’s all about style without content.

GGP You mean radical actions without repercussions?

RSRight!

GGPTropical tourism without Montezuma’s revenge?

RSGlobal nada…rien

GGP Nothing-ness, really?

Just style, anonymous sex, weird trivia?
So, if that’s what defines your values and your identity,
let’s fuckin’ engage in trivia.

RS Good! But bring down at least 10 decibels the level of your drama.
Remember: pc est passé, and so is rage, Supermojado.

Now, give me some burning trivia. Go:

GGP Madonna defeated Argentina & got to play Evita
Gooooo Madonna!!

RS Dated material. Next!

GGP Selena died precisely during the crossover.

(Looking up.) Selena, we luv you diva, auuu!!

RS What’s so fucking special about Selena?

GGP Her whiny voice, her liposuctioned nalgas.
Besides, she is all we have, since we’ve got no real leaders
o que? Do you think we have any true Chicano leaders?

RS Kind of.

GGPCan you mention one?

RSEddie Olmos (GGP reacts),El Haniachi Two (GGP reacts), the Taco Bell Chihuahua.

GGP Fax you, man! Marcos! He is not a Chicano but he is certainly a leader…

RS He’s just a fading myth. Back to our search for burning trivia. Go!

GGP Zappa is resting in the Olympus of Americana (me persigno) per ipsum, ecu nip zzzum Zzzzappa!

RS And so is Sinatra.

GGP Sinatra?
(Sings)“When I was 35, it was a very good year”
ese mi Frank
your absence hurts much more than that of Octavio Paz.

RS Hey that’s a great trivial line.
Do you have some of this shit on disc

GGPNo. I no longer have a laptop. I am a Neo-Luddite.

RSA luddite with a mechanical wheelchair?

GGP Yes.

RS You fuckin’ ro-man-tico! Shift 348X-13 Trivialize race. Go!

GGP OJ was a cyborg constructed by your own fears & desires.

RS But was he guilty?

GGP Yes, he was guilty & not that interesting a character

RS But we cared about him, cause he was (GP intersperses “¿Que?”)…cause
he is a…a…a…black cyborg.
(Pause)

GGP I didn’t say it. You did!!

RS These are the issues that truly matter

GGP Sure…in a time & place
where nothing significant truly matters.

RS What you consider trivia is my raison d’être.
Give me a headline that truly captures our times.

GGP Clintoris & Linguinsky: the great millennial soap opera.

RS Elaborate…elaborate…elaborate.

GGP Monica finally described in detail the genitals of your President.

RS Don’t elaborate.

GGP She said, she said:
“it’s pink, about three inches long, and it never gets hard
but there is something endearing about it.”

RSYou are diverging from our subject matter. We are begining to sound like bad experimental poetry. Neruda meets Jello Biafra.
What are we really here for?

GGPTonight?

RS Tonight

GGP Tonight?

RS Tonight

GGP (to the audience) There is too much turmoil in your private life for me to bother you with the truly heavy issues like racism, homelessness or police brutality.

RS Right! That was the 80s, ese.
We’ve heard that pop song so many times
but tonight, your audience is understandably tired.
They suffer from…repeat with me:
com-pa-ssion fa-tigue, yeah.

GGP com-pa-ssion fa-tigue, yeah.

RS Just to hear you say it makes me want to slash you in the face.

GGP Thank you.

Lights up on Sara Shelton-Mann SL. dressed as Mariachi Zapatista. She breaks into
fast-paced, Chaplinesque movements with a gun, dancing to Mexican punk. Strobe light. Music stops abruptly and video cuts out at end of her dance. Juan Ybarra as Green Alien enters. Beginning of Nintendo Ethnic Wars.

“Performance, like religion, is about faith…and deception.”
SAN POCHO AZTLANECA TO A JOURNALIST

“North American and European visions of Latin America are fascinating. It is entertaining to observe the shadows Western thought casts on the walls of the Mexican equivalent of Plato’s cave. There are two recurrent visions: Americans and Europeans think they can see their own alter ego in the Latin American mirror in the form of a savage but paradisiacal alternative. What they also see, however, is radical, Oriental otherness.”

ROGER BARTRA, “MEXICAN REFLECTIONS ON DISTORTED IMAGES,” TELOS, 1995

“I believe in the power of decorating and aestheticizing the body in order to exaggerate, challenge and problematize mythical notions of the Mexican Other.
In the American imagination, Mexicans are allowed to occupy two different but strangely complementary spaces: we are either unnecessarily violent, hypersexual, cannibalistic and highly infectious; or innocent, “natural,” ritualistic and shamanic. Both stereotypes are equally colonializing.”

FROM GÓMEZ-PEÑA’S PERFORMANCE DIARIES, 1997

Mexican Beasts and Living Santos

I

In early 1994, Roberto Sifuentes and I premiered in Arizona our most ambitious collaborative art project to date, a performance/installation titled...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations and Sources
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Performance Documents
• Part 2: Migrant Provocateurs: Further Chronicles
• Part 3: Conversations Across the Border Fence
• Part 4: In Search of a New Topography
• Afterword: Postcards from the Border Zone