Humboldt: México para los mexicanos

When you cherish a breathtaking sunset, the red, orange and yellow hues of sunlight making their last hurrahs for the day, you want that moment to last forever. The tranquility and majesty command silence as you gaze in awe at the beauty that envelops the senses. Sometimes, when I leave the theater, I feel a similar sense of awe and reverence. It’s a testament that when a playwright develops profound ideas, in combination with a thoughtful production, the audience will leave with emotions that unequivocally provoke deep reflection. In my opinion, theater has the power to be just as majestic as nature.

And that’s how I can somewhat describe how I felt after Saturday’s performance of Humboldt: México para los mexicanos. Here, the playwright (Ernesto Anaya Ottone), director (David Psalmon), and the six actors are all foreigners, living in Mexico. So, the title itself is catchy because this is a work produced not by traditional Mexicans. However, this irony is part of the main theme of the show. Alexander von Humboldt, one of the show’s characters, was the first foreigner to become a naturalized citizen of the United States of Mexico, decreed by the president himself, in 1827. However, Humboldt is also responsible for delivering maps of Mexico to the United States of America, maps that would eventually lead to the USA’s interest in this territory. In 1848, after Mexico’s defeat to the USA, a large territory of Mexico became part of the USA, thanks in part to the maps defining this territory. And Mexico has its’ first naturalized citizen to thank, in part, for this loss.

(A poster for the show, also the director)

There’s also the question of what it means to “be” Mexican. Each actor came to Mexico with a dream to be Mexican. However, to become Mexican one takes a very large quiz, about 100 questions (and this is just one aspect). The actors actually read every single question to this test to the audience. At first, the audience wanted to answer the questions, and then the actors began to read the questions more quickly. After ninety questions, and some pretty absurd ones as well, I think we all realized it was a pretty ridiculous test. One actor read to us #28, which asks about the identification of the person that originally combined the idea of the Aztecas with the Mixtecas. The answer according to the test was Huitzilopochtli, the God of War. But the actors showed us that Humboldt was the first to make that connection.  Also, as noted by the actors, if a person misses just one question on the test it is enough justification to deny citizenship to a foreigner. And that’s what happened to this particular actor who answered that it was a public myth. Answering these questions was overwhelming to the actors, and each one of them displayed their frustration with wanting to “be” Mexican but impeded by a series of questions. In fact, they felt as if Mexico didn’t want them. They came bright-eyed only to realize that, as they said in the play, “Mi casa es su casa” is only a façade.

According to the playwright, “being” Mexican is more defined by a transition from one place to another more than anything else. The playwright himself declares: “We want to break the myth that Mexico is only for Mexicans. In the very idea of Mexico the foreign is imprinted: the Aztecs were foreigners that arrived at Texcoco Lake, just like the Spaniards did. In both cases the encounter was violent. The association between foreigner/conquistador has been, more than just one episode in Mexico’s history, a constant. Through this work we hope to be able to repair this fracture by showing the human face of diversity, taking into account that the experience of being a foreigner is something that, in the end, we all do, because to feel far away is a universal experience.” And that’s something I can appreciate, being a foreigner right now in Mexico.

The play’s production was masterful. Many levels and areas of the stage, as well as the audience, were used throughout the production. It was a very interactive show and it helped us, especially myself, approach some of the feelings of the actors, who were also foreigners. To be quite honest, though, there was a lot of stimulation surrounding the technology, the voice-overs, the shouts, the movements, the smoke machine, and a plethora of other elements which combined to offer the audience too many images. But as Dr. Compton and I spoke about this element of the production we realized it imitated reality much more faithfully. So many aspects of a culture, of a nation, of family, of self, all combine to offer so many factors in any identity. We are left questioning just how one defines the self. Is it family? Is it a language? Is it a geographic location? These questions affect not only foreigners living in Mexico, but foreigners everywhere.

(The multimedia usage during the play)

This play affected me tremendously and, as I said earlier, on our walk home many thoughts were racing through my mind. I wanted to lose myself in these thoughts in order to make sense of what I just saw, due to the immense beauty of the spoken word that brought about these feelings. But that’s the splendor of irony, isn’t it? Sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on something as majestic as the sunset, or what defines us as people. Mexico for Mexicans? No. Mexico is for everyone, because everyone is a foreigner.

And as a final note, the director mentioned the 43 students from Ayotzinapa that are still missing, the fight for Wirikuta against privatized mining in their indigenous community, as well as other students missing in Michoacan. I want to take the space here to also remind my readers that Mexico will not rest until these missing students are found. I unite in solidarity with those asking for the return of these students. No one should ever be forgotten

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("Wirikuta for the defense of the sacred. No to mining.")

(A piece of  activist art in Avenida Reforma calling attention to the 43 students still missing: "Because they were taken alive, we want them back alive!")