A Return to Mayan and Aztec Roots: At the Chicano and Latin American Festival

Extract

For two weeks in late June and early July, 1974, Chicano and Latin-American theatre groups held a festival in Mexico City and at the Pyramids of Teotihuacan and Tajfn. It was unique as international festivals go, for unlike the festivals at Avignon, Nancy, Spoleto, Dubrovnik, Edinburgh, and Sao Paulo, the gathering in Mexico was not sponsored by an agency of the establishment as a tourist attraction. Instead, it was sponsored by two alternative theatre organizations having an affinity with indigenous culture on the two continents—the Chicano organization Teatro Nacional de Aztlan (TENAZ) and the Centro Libre de Experimentacion Teatral y Artistica (CLETA) of Mexico. The theme of the festival was “One Continent, One Culture, for a Free Theatre and for Liberation.” There is an assumption that the United States government has divided America and not merely by building the Panama Canal.