Dramaturgy, Citizenship, and Queerness Contemporary Mexican Political Cabaret

by Gastn A. Alzate

Contemporary Mexican cabaret is an art genre akin to theater and based in part on the popular tent theater (Teatro de Carpa) of the 1920s and 1930s. It is profoundly connected to the exercise of critical citizenship vis--vis Mexican neoliberalism. Many of its artists are part of a deviation from the sexual norm in that they challenge the predominant conceptions of gender and sexuality in national discourse. The fact that cabaret attracts an audience beyond purely commercial entertainment can be interpreted in terms of Slavoj ieks proposal that the organic symbolic links created by communities are gradually being eliminated in favor a single form of relationship, the economic one. Mexican cabaret calls into question nationalistic collective models and proposes alternatives to the uniform cultural production of subjectivities and sexualities. In doing so it calls attention to the fragmentation and multiplicity of Mexican reality and especially to the need for nondogmatic and queer perceptions of it. Keywords: Mexican cabaret, Latin American theater, theater and politics, gender and theater

In Mexico City political cabaret has become a full-fledged theatrical genre that takes place at night either in bars or in small theaters allowing for close interaction with the audience. This essay presents an overview of contemporary Mexican cabaret understood as an art genre akin to theater and based in part on the popular tent theater of the 1920s and 1930s. It will necessarily be partial, since this type of theater is a heterogeneous cultural movement whose defining characteristic is humor as a means for reflecting on the multiple manifestations of exclusion in contemporary Mexico (political, due to a corrupt system, cultural, as in the case of indigenous peoples, economic, due to increasing social inequality, and gender-related, as pertaining to the role of women and sexual minorities). Simultaneously, the multiplicity of cabaret relies on the strategic use of elements provided by the diversity of theatrical training and artistic motivations of the performers (Alzate, 2002). Overall, the most distinctive characteristic of Mexican political cabaret is its desire to be an inclusive form of theater in which playwrights and directors merely channel the mise-en-scne, which is predominantly constructed by the actors. In this essay I will establish connections between theatrical inclusion and social inclusion as a means of showing the deep connection between cabaret and the exercise of critical citizenship vis--vis Mexican neoliberalism.
Gastn A. Alzate is an associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California State University, Los Angeles. He has published on Latin American theater, film, popular culture, and literature in Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and the United States.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 170, Vol. 37 No. 1, January 2010 62-76 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X09351710 2010 Latin American Perspectives

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Figure 1.

Regina Orozco in Del clsico al arrabal (photo by Miguel Angel Rodrguez)

Of the many highly commercial shows that may be classified as cabaret, I refer here only to those that deliberately present a resistant (antiofficial) political purpose and a theatricalin the formal senseexploration of reality. I will briefly discuss some performances and artists that gave visibility to the genre in the mid-1980s and then comment on representative artists of a more recent generation. There are artists left aside who would be mentioned if this were a comprehensive study, but I shall limit myself to outlining certain pathways that cabaret is opening as a cultural and theatrical movement deeply committed to its present (Figure 1). Contemporary political cabaret is recontextualizing a genre that reached its peak in Mexico City in the 1920s and 1930s and had practically disappeared by the 1960s. I understand it as a resistant symbolic network responding to a collective need vis--vis the mechanisms of marginalization arising from neoliberal policies in Mexico, particularly since the period in the 1980s in which Miguel de la Madrid of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary PartyPRI) was elected president. Cabaret shows the need for dialoguing with realities that tend to be either excluded or minimized by dominant discourses in both the media and official cultural institutions (e.g., the Compaa Nacional de Teatro [National Theater Company]). At the same time, particularly for the newer generation of performers, political cabaret does not reflect a commonality of either aesthetic or dramaturgical purposes. Nonetheless, performers share points of departure including humor as tool for social criticism, improvisation, collective creation, fragmentation of the dramatic structure in sketches, the dialectics established by these fluctuating structures with daily events (mainly in Mexicos capital) and by interaction with spectators, and, finally, the fact that cabaret entails writing, producing,

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acting, and directing at the same time. Contrary to common belief, this demands highly disciplined work as well as constant renewal by its practitioners. Cabaret also demands a wide range of competence in various aesthetic languages including music, dance, and video. In addition, insofar as it does not depart from canonical texts it displays the expressive possibilities of these languages. In fact, cabaret performances that do depart from canonical texts usually subvert these texts. Another essential trait related to both improvising and the open and collective nature of the genre is the absence of the fourth wall. The actors position themselves before an audience that is constantly intervening in the show. Many of these artists are part of a deviation from or perversion of the sexual norm in that they challenge predominant conceptions of gender and sexuality. Perversion is used here in the sense given to it by Teresa de Lauretis. In her The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire (1994) the term perverse desire reflects a reconsideration of the construction of lesbian desire through a revisit of Freud, Laplanche, and Lacan, but this reconsideration broadens our understanding of all kinds of sexualities. As part of the poststructuralist movement of the 1990s, queer theory advances the idea that identities are not fixed. It suggests that it is meaningless to talk in general about lesbians, gays, women, or any other gender group because subjectivities consist of many complex cultural factors. This makes sexualities (normative or perverse) belonging to cultures supposedly located outside of the dominant economic sectors of the Western world especially appropriate for analysis by queer theory. As a consequence, queerness can exist as a subset of gay and lesbian cultures but need not be exclusively related to them (Doty, 1993). As David W. Foster (1997) asserts, The so-called gay sensibility and its lesbian counterpart are necessarily queer (although lesbians and gays may in some contexts endorse the straight), but queerness is something larger than gayness and lesbianism. In this research queerness is not just a synonym for gay and lesbian subalternities because cabaret performances impact and attract more than the gay or queer sector of Mexican society. The queerness and queering they produce within the dramatic text of Mexican culture is their deviation from or perversion of the sexual norm as part of the fragmentation that this culture experiences today. At the end of this article I will explain the connection between this type of deviation, producing alternative readings of Mexican culture, and the fact that political cabaret openly resists the negative impact of economic globalization and neoliberal models on the organic symbolic links created by communities. In general terms, political cabaret is a theater genre that constantly takes risks and poses formal and ideological questions, both of which are fundamental traits of any artistic movement. Obviously, aesthetic outcomes may vary; shows may or may not succeed. However, formal theater is equally not exempt from the possibility of aesthetic failure. Political cabaret is essential to any consideration of contemporary Mexican theater, and in my view there is no reason for dismissing it as simply a minor genre (gnero chico). At the same time, its outsider character is probably the source of its power as a cultural expression. In fact, it must be understood as an artistic exploration of nonhegemonic cultural codes.

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JESUSA RODRGUEZ The lesbian artist Jesusa Rodrguez and her wife, the Argentine musician Liliana Felipe, founded a bar-theater called El Hbito and dedicated to cabaret as a space for civil resistance in 1990. Two significant shows exemplify the scope of Rodrguezs work: the opera Donna Giovanni and the sketch La Coatlicue. In the 19831986 Donna Giovanni, displaying great mastery in both textual and stage dramaturgy, Jesusa cuts Mozarts opera Don Giovanni into pieces and transforms it into erotic and ludic visual theater in an attempt to critique the feminine role in love relationships in contemporary times (see Bert, 1986). The 1993 La Coatlicue transforms a pre-Hispanic statue from the Mexica (Aztec) Room of Mexicos National Anthropology Museum into an animated being (the real mother of Mexicans) running for Mexicos presidency. Through the use of an indigenous female icon confined in a museum, the artist parodies the attitude of official Mexican politicians toward their countrys problems. Rodrguezs Coatlicue calls upon her children not to forget her and complains about not having a special car (a mama-mobile) like the popes. Rodrguez calls the show pre-Hispanic cabaret, thus pointing to the need to reduce the load of monolithic myths upon which closedminded nationalism tends to be based. In Mexicos official culture indigenous cultures have been frozen in a grandiose past while the rights of their bearers are flagrantly ignored. Other famous female icons re-created by Rodrguez in her shows include La Malinche (the conqueror Hernan Cortss translator, transformed by Rodrguez into an interpreter for the Emperor Zedillitzinformer president Ernesto Zedilloand the U.S. Marines) and the nun Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz, whom Rodrguez imagines as incarcerated in the Almoloya penitentiary, formerly a readaptation prison (a reformatory for people accused of nonviolent crimes, in 2001 renamed Las Palmas). Jesusa has impersonated Sor Juana in many political demonstrations and as part of the Pride March, Mexico Citys annual gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender political demonstration. Rodrguezs work is in the tradition of the Teatro de Carpa (see Avils, 2005), the theater of the underdog, which combined circus spectacle and political satire. In an effort to revive this dynamic, Rodrguez has participated in many popular theatrical activities, among them pastorelas, a colonial drama form consisting of a mixture of religious teachings, indigenous Mexican folklore, and vulgar comedy. Though they initially developed as part of a transcultured form of religious practice in the sixteenth century, pastorelas exist today either as an evolved popular practice or as a self-conscious postcolonial strategy of avant-garde artists. Traditionally the plot of a pastorela revolves around the pilgrimage of shepherds to Bethlehem to see the newborn Christ Child, although according to medieval tradition an evil spirit is one of the most important characters. The titles of some of her pastorelas offer an idea of Rodrguezs subversive modifications: Narco-pastorela: El cartel de Beln (The Bethlehem Cartel), 1990; El derecho de abortar (The Right to Abortion), 1999; and Pastorela terrorista, 2004. Her outside cabaret work accomplishes an important task as a popular provider of alternative and alterable interpretations of colonial and present times. All of her work queers official discourse that holds colonial history frozen in time.

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The Mexican comedy company La Chinga consists of young actors from the shantytowns of Mexico City who have been trained by Rodrguez and others, and it puts on shows in public squares, parks, and schools using archetypal characters drawn from the streets. This project has generated similar enterprises with a more political aim. Prometeo was created in 2000 in memory of the 45 victims of the massacre of Acteal, who were assassinated by Mexican federal military forces, the government of Chiapas, and PRI paramilitaries in 1997. Extending her work even farther, Rodrguez is frequently involved in confrontational street interventions such as the 1999 demonstration against the construction of a commercial mall in the archeological zone of Cuicuilco. The Cuicuilco ruins date to 500 BC, are the oldest large-scale construction in central Mexico still standing, and are now almost completely surrounded by new buildings because of the failure of the oppositions conservation campaign. Yet another example of Rodrguezs sociopolitical action is her opposition to the return of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, whom many held responsible for the economic crisis in Mexico in the 1990s. She led a group of protesters who screamed political slogans such as Get out, criminal Salinas! and Salinas de Gortari: Drug dealer-politician! and wrote the word KILLER in red letters across the stone wall surrounding Salinass home. Rodriguezs cabaret theater, her strong and open support of the Zapatista movement, and her active role in Andrs Manuel Lpez Obradors political campaign are testimony to her belief that an artists ethical and aesthetic engagements should go hand in hand. At the moment she has left El Hbito in the hands of a cabaret company named Las Reinas Chulas and is focusing on other activities involving direct political participation and civil resistance activism, including her continuous support of Lpez Obrador as legitimate president of Mexico and the Movimiento de Resistencia Civil Pacfica (Peaceful Civil Resistance Movement). (She and many other Mexicans believe that there was fraud in the presidential election won by Felipe Caldern over Lpez Obrador.) She is now doing what she calls mass cabaret, which consists of public political protest involving ordinary citizens through cabaret strategies (e.g., promoting songs with well-known melodies but new lyrics criticizing the government and impersonating politicians at political rallies). ASTRID HADAD Astrid Hadads shows involve the popular character of the female ranchera singer and make fun of social, sexual, and political relationships in Mexico. Hadad reelaborates many icons of popular Mexican culture such as the eagle, the cactus (nopal), and crowned nuns (religious women from colonial times), turning them into baroque allegories of Mexicos present times. While Rodrguezs cabaret is mainly characterized by verbal wit, Hadads shows are characterized by visual excess and the centrality of music (she is an accomplished singer). She and her band, Los Tarzanes, re-create traditional and regional music (son jarocho, son cubano, sones de mariachi), as well as popular music (ranchera, bolero, balada, and danzn). She transforms songs into characters; in fact, for her songs are literally a pre-text. At the visual level, the syncretism implicit in her multiple ornate dresses gives her the opportunity to

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Figure 2.

Astrid Hadad in OH! Diosas (photo by Miguel Angel Rodrguez)

play with the various feminine archetypes representing Mexicanness (see Harmony, 1997). The name of band (the Tarzans) is part of the parodic strategy she uses to resemanticize masculine symbolic spaces through humor and visual collage (e.g., in her music video Corazn Sangrante [Bleeding Heart], Figure 2). Hadads cabaret performances are related to the Diva figure of 1940s Mexican cabaret and musical reviews. She has also acknowledged the inspiration of various artists from postwar German cabaret in combining nightclub entertainment (live music) and sociopolitical and cultural commentary and the use of theatrical strategies such as changing costumes for almost every song. The Diva was a model for all classes as they broke with conventions and found spaces for behaviors and ways of being that were previously inconceivable for women in Mexico (Constantino, 1995). Instead of merely re-creating the autonomous space of these Mexican women, Hadad attempts to move the Diva figure another step toward nonmasculine or antistraight space. Her performances reflect a desire to reprise those of historical lesbian singers such as Lucha Reyes. One could say that it is in the life of Reyes that Hadad has found the most characteristic ingredients of her performances: the dramatization of the lyrics, the rough voice, the aggressive attitude toward the audience, and the wearing of Mexican national symbols on stage. Reyes scandalized the public by incorporating Mexican symbols such as nopales or the Mexican eagle into her outfits. Hadad has tried to maintain a cantina-like environment by promoting the ranchero aspects of the show, including the rude manner in which she sings and interacts with the public. At the same time, her songs use feminine masochism (a very Mexican pathos) as a platform for a social and political critique of contemporary

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events. For example, in her show La multimamada (The Multisuck, 1995), in which she appeared in a traditional Mexican dress covered with plastic breasts representing the motherland, she said, I feel like the true image of the Mexican Republic: all fucked up. Like Rodrguezs, Hadads cabaret involves a new reading of Mexican history and its myths and icons. In La cuchilla (The Knife, 2003) Hadad mixes ranchera songs with boleros, tangos, rumbas, and Cuban sones. The show is a hyperdramatic text of multiple musical periods and genres, updated and resemanticized on her body. It does not pretend to delve deeply into false dualisms such as rural versus urban culture or modern versus indigenous culture, dualisms maintained by the neoliberal market approach. She may incorporate references to current political affairs into her costumes, once wearing a hat with a Mexican eagle with the face of Salinas being screwed by the American eagle with the face of Clinton. Not surprisingly, in the same show she also portrayed Mexico as a woman being abused by its politicians. Hadad offered a similar dynamic with Bush, Blair, and former president Aznar at the 2004 Forum Barcelona. One of the objectives of Hadads cultural performances is to overwhelm the audience with their artistic splendor. Their baroque element comes from the combination of components of different symbolic Mexican spheres such as religion, kitsch iconography, traditional popular culture, and musical theater. These components are based on sensuality, carnality, and the pleasures of musical and visual aesthetics. The necessity of these components is closely related to the desire of the artist to define her body as the performance itself. Ones perception of ones body, however, is dependent upon individual social and historical experience. For example, in 1992 Hadad based her show La monja coronada on the visual iconography of Mexican colonial nuns. In the video performance Corazn sangrante there is a segment in which Hadad appears as a sleeping Coatlicue. During her sleep, her body becomes Ixtacciuatl, the Sleeping Woman (also one of the volcanoes that surround Mexico City), and she wakes up as the Virgin of Guadalupe. The syncretism of her multiple costumes allows her to play with iconic representations of women that date to colonial times. The lyrics of the song speak of a heartbroken woman lamenting her abandonment and mistreatment by her man, and this abandonment and mistreatment are extended to include all the feminine aspects of Mexican history since the so-called Discovery. All these meanings are implicit in the clever scene in which Coatlicue becomes the Virgin of Guadalupe. These religious icons are, for Hadad, the foundations of the multifaceted identity of the Mexican people and contain both regressive and progressive elements. Hadad makes these progressive elements more explicit and visible. Pecadora (Sinner, 2001) is a delightful example of this transformation of the nonprogressive elements into something healthier and more liberating for Mexican women. Hadad knows that she is performing within a Catholic culture in which the division between religious and mainstream cultural icons is virtually nonexistent. For this reason, she uses a theatrical strategy of visibility that summarizes both the social construction of women and the religious construction of saints, Jesus Christ, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and other Catholic icons. She resemanticizes these emblems from a progressive perspective. Paradoxically, by playing with cultural icons she also shows how to respect them, be part of them, and, at the same time, resist the patriarchal ideology implicit in them.

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In the same way that there was a resemanticization of the European Christian icons in the Latin American Baroque, Hadads performances queer the traditional and contemporary emblems and icons of Mexican culture. Through the use of mystical and profane elements, her cabaret shows the history of her lesbian body, the history of a multiple, diverse, and fragmented selfin other words, the history of Mexico. TITO VASCONCELOS Tito Vasconcelos is a well-known public figure working in favor of gay rights, a cause actively supported by various other cabaret artists such as Jesusa Rodrguez and Regina Orozco, among others. Also like Rodrguez, he is the owner of a cabaret, which he calls Cabaretito. Through his work Vasconcelos has linked the canonic tradition (Greek theater, Shakespeare, Dario Fo, Ibsen, and American musical theater) with the review theater (Revista) of the Mexican Revolution. His cabaret is a balance between a theater/ cultural genre known as camp and Mexican Revista, focusing on the hyperbolic aspect of both genres. Whereas Revista exaggerates the archetypal characters of Mexico City, camp exaggerates both queer aspects of lesbian and gay culture and aspects of heterosexual gender construction. From camp Vasconcelos has borrowed a sense of superficiality that takes the form of both social and political criticism. He believes that the intersection of these two seemingly incompatible cultural elements, pop culture and sociopolitics, reveals Mexican lifes deepest conflict (Figure 3). As a consequence of his multilayered approach, Vasconceloss work is in constant metamorphosis. One can appreciate this metamorphosis in Mariposas y maricosas (Butterflies and Fairies, 1984). In the tradition of the Theater of the Ridiculous of Charles Ludlam, with whom Vasconcelos studied in New York, the artist has built a dramatic persona based on Chepina Peralta, a star of 1970s Mexican pop culture. In his representation of Peralta, he combines the Revista, popular TV culture, camp theater, and political commentary to produce one of his famous characters, Doctora Tatiana Ilhuicamina, a feminist cooking teacher and gay rights advocate. As Antonio Prieto (2000) asserts, Doctora Tatiana both satirizes and subverts the way in which popular heterosexual culture uses folklore and female characters, converting them into official icons of a supposed Mexican nationality. Unlike Rodrguez, whose sophisticated cabaret demands a high degree of political analysis from its audience, Vasconcelos is more interested in the popular roots of Revista. For this reason, although he and Rodrguez have worked together on projects such as La Chinga, his cabaret tends to be more closely related to popular culture and gay culture, exploring icons and topics from Mexican B movies, advertising, and TV programs. Sexo, pudor y aliens (Sex, Shame, and Aliens, 1998) is a good example; the title is a parody of a popular Mexican drama and later a film called Sexo, pudor y lgrimas, which attempts not very successfullyto portray the existential tribulations of upper-class thirty-something couples in Mexico City. As in the old Revista, at Cabaretito the actors are required to read newspapers and adapt their roles accordingly. An example of this type of cabaret is

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Figure 3.

Tito Vasconcelos in Malena arma un tango (photo by Miguel Angel Rodrguez)

Los ngeles de Chente (The Angels of Chente [Vicente], 2001), which was created the same day as the inauguration of Vicente Fox as president of Mexico in 2001. During its first week, the audience understood perfectly the joking references being made to President Fox. In its second week the audience was losing interest in the topic of the president, forcing the actors to move to other references such as the Zapatista movement. This dynamic implies a large investment of time and requires very skilled acting for improvisation, of which Vasconcelos is a master. This is also true of the new generation of cabaret actors and directors, most of whom have been trained by him. Within the theatrical community, Vasconcelos is well known for his generosity and pedagogical skills. One of Vasconceloss most interesting projects is his work alongside senior students of the Centro Universitario de Teatro (University Center for Theater CUT) in creating the play Shakespeare a la carta (Shakespeare la Carte, 1997). For this play the audience would choose a sketch from a menu they received upon arrival at the theater. Vasconcelos and his students re-created most of the dynamics of the comedia dellarte but in terms of archetypal characters from nineteenth-century Mexican lithography. Vasconceloss cabaret work is highly creative in its postmodern translation of the dynamics of Revista. His adaptation of canonical theater via gender issues and pop culture has produced some of the most critical and hilarious cabaret performances in contemporary Mexican history. Vasconceloss cabaret re-creates the underpinnings of popular theater while finding its foundations in a dramaturgy in which actors are not subjected to the tyranny of text. This is a fundamental feature of his artistry and of political cabaret in general. Although there are significant exceptions, most of formal

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Mexican theater has been based on a textual understanding of drama. This approach often constrains the actors participation in dramaturgy while privileging the text. Some playwrights have even dictated how their plays should be staged, leaving the director simply to clear the mise-en-scne so that the text can flow. Sometimes it is the director who takes control and requires the actor to be a blank slate. Cabaret performances like those of Vasconcelos open up a different path first by questioning both the dramatic and the cultural (heterosexual) text in a highly innovative manner and second by allowing the actors dramaturgy to flow through farcical strategies from camp, improvisation, and musical parody taken from Revista and Teatro de Carpa (see Prieto, 2000). To a great extent the success of these artists is due to the displacement of the type of dramaturgy that usually predominates in formal theater. They have claimed for theater a freer space that simultaneously allows for the exploration of an alternative dramaturgy, political criticism, and a queering of Mexican history by underscoring suppressed experiences in the formation of national identity (e.g., the role of women, gay and lesbian figures, and the rights of minorities). They have been able to survive financially by using spaces often considered not part of formal theater such as nightclubs and bars. In fact, the autonomy provided by these spaces has brought them a wider audience. Cabaret has even attracted the attention of a large part of the regular audience for formal and avant-garde theater, which quite often generates highly aestheticized productions that do not touch at all upon Mexicans social and existential concerns. What is at issue here is not social realism but a dialogue with the reality of the audience. Needless to say, more than anything theater is a live art. LAS REINAS CHULAS The cabaret collective known as Las Reinas Chulas has been performing at El Vicio (formerly El Hbito) since 2002. Ana Francis Mor, Cecilia Sotres, Nora Huerta, and Marisol Gas have made an effort to systematize the legacy of the cabaret artists of the previous generation, and all them received training from both Rodrguez and Vasconcelos. They in turn are training new young cabaret performers and allowing them to present their shows at El Vicio. The companys performances are based on historical research and aim at exploring a fusion of German cabaret, Mexican Revista, and academic actors training. For Las Reinas Chulas the most important trait of cabaret is civil disobedience and resistance. Its activities are divided into three fronts. The first is cabaret, understood as political farce, and it has attracted the attention of an audience that shares the companys critical perspective and its concern with raising awareness of the damage done to the Mexican social fabric by neoliberal (market-driven) policies resulting in increasing poverty and social inequality. While its political engagement is clearly on the left, its space is open to artists with divergent critical perceptions of Mexican politics. Some artists support Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador and otherslike Vasconcelos himself, who has presented various shows at El Vicioare highly critical of the Partido de la Revolucin Democrtica (Democratic Revolutionary Party PRD), Lpez Obradors party, which is considered leftist as compared with

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the PRI and the Partido Accin Nacional (National Action PartyPAN). Similarly, the audience does not have a common ideology beyond a high level of discontent with Mexican politicians and neoliberal policies; some support Lpez Obrador and others dislike him. Because of the nature of cabaret, people in the audience can directly intervene by shouting out their disagreement with the artists or by clapping or making comments when they agree, which results in a highly vivid theatrical experience. Cabaret artists have to be skillful and creative to incorporate these interventions into the show. The main foundations of Las Reinas Chulass plays are in-depth historical research on the topic of each show, humor, and the dramatic use of music. The plays are not monolithic political harangues but display very creative textual dramaturgy. Music is the element that connects all the sketches, opening up multiple possibilities for the artists to parody stereotypes and famous figures related to the topic of each show. Another common trait is the creation of female characters that serve as a platform for questioning the mechanisms of power and social exclusion. A good example is La banda de las recodas (The Stingy Womens Band, which is a pun on El Recodo, a famous all-male Norteo band). The band, purportedly of female drug dealers who are closely related to Mexican politicians, dresses as famous Norteo singers (e.g., Maribel Guardia or Ninel Conde) and talks and sings as if it were giving a concert. The musician Tareke Ortiz, a close collaborator of Las Reinas, composed all the songs for the show. As suggested above, a common topic of their cabaret plays is the link between government abuse (e.g., economic policies, corruption, impunity, and/or crimes committed by either politicians or state institutions) and violence against women. A good example is a song from La banda de las recodas entitled Hecho en Mxico (Made in Mexico). This song introduces a symbolic space in which, through humor, spectators must cross the line of political correctness in order to reflect on the need to do something about the violence impacting women and devastating Mexico. They are urged to look directly at the reality beyond the glamorous and superficial spectacle of Norteo commercial music. During the show the band encourages the audience, particularly female spectators, to sing along with the chorus of Made in Mexico: Let them violate us/ Let them behead us/ Let them rape us/ Let them manufacture us in a maquila/ Let them pack us/ Let them export us/ After all/ this is the Mexican way. Humor has always been essential to resisting dogmatism, and Las Reinas Chulas are successful in making cabaret a space for reflection without detracting from its playful nature. In fact, the best cabaret shows are those that avoid easy or sensationalist jokes and try instead to incorporate humor as part of the dramatic universe created by the play. A very important difference between the neoliberal entertainment market and political cabaret shows is that the latter openly question the social and political status quo, in which women are invisible, police and military abuses against the civil population are justified in the name of maintaining order, and corruption is hidden behind rightist ideologies supported by the conservative wing of the Catholic Church while the government sells the countrys resources to foreign investors. As Las Reinas Chulas have put it, After the neoliberal practices enforced in the last presidential terms, even the most innocent and pure creature of the Lord can become the stingiest human being. Another

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significant show by this company is the Opera china pirata (Chinese Pirate Opera), directed by Jos Antonio Cordero, which is a parody of a Chinese opera dealing with economic globalization and pirate products such as the pirate President Caldern (a pirate because he stole the election from Lpez Obrador). All the characters in this opera wear dresses with Hello Kitty and Super Power Girls prints and can be easily identified with those of traditional Chinese opera except for the fact that they refer to Mexican politicians. Two other significant shows by Las Reinas Chulas are Fiesten (a parody of the Scandinavian play Festen with characters belonging to the ruling Mexican political party, the PAN), and Petrleo en la sangre (Oil in the Blood), a collection of sketches based on the beautiful visual iconography of various classical Mexican films. In the latter Las Reinas Chulas embody famous characters and scenes from these movies (e.g., Mara Flix, Pedro Infante), but all the dialogues relate in one way or another to the government proposal to privatize PEMEX, the Mexican oil company nationalized by President Lzaro Crdenas in 1938. Another field of action for Las Reinas Chulas consists of workshops on human development, gender equality, and creativity for women and youth. Las Reinas began working in this area alongside Jesusa Rodrguez, who had the idea of offering cabaret workshops on these topics to indigenous women in Chiapas. They have continued working in this line but now focus more on Mexico City. They train young cabaret artists to create sketches of their own on topics such as sexual health, abortion rights, sexual diversity, and gay marriage. They then present these sketches outside high schools in Mexico City, sometimes under the sponsorship of the city government (now in the hands of the PRD). Thus, they use cabaret as a tool to potentiate educational messages related to human rights issues. This is a clear example of the combination of political activism with a dramaturgy belonging mainly to the actors. OTHER CONTEMPORARY GROUPS Several other Mexican cabaret artists and groups deserve attention because of the high quality and originality of their proposals. I will just mention a few of them. Gnero menor (Minor Genre) is a cabaret collective founded by Paola Izquierdo and Roam Len and often including Gustavo Garca Proal, Isabel Almeida, and Jess Daz. Izquierdo and Len are professional actors trained in Mexico at the National School of Theater Arts, and Len is also an accomplished musician. Their shows are equally intelligent and hilarious and are characterized by the centrality of live, original music (mainly jazz), the use of clown technique and visual humor, impeccable staging and acting, and the iconography of fairy tales and cinema noir but in the context of Mexican contemporary life. Among their plays I will mention Cabaret noir (Black Cabaret) and En el pas de los medios el entero es rey (In a Country of Halves the Whole is King). The first one is full of references to the famous movie The Maltese Falcon, with the difference that the lost item is Mexicos oil. In it Bogarts character is represented by a very stupid Mexican detective. The second is staged like a fairy tale. Its main character is similar to Tinker Bell, a naive fairy who finds

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herself in Mexico where she is asked for sexual favors, has to deal with the Mexican police, and has to cross the border. Leticia Pedrajo is an actress with a long career in formal theater and television. She usually collaborates with Vanessa Ciangerotti, a well-known actress and director, and the playwright Simone Vitoria. In 2007 they presented Pita en cuatro tiempos: Juguete escnico cabareteado por una narcisa y un pianista cmplice (Pita in Four Times: Scenic Toy for a Narcissistic Woman and a Pianist), a play by Vitoria based on exhaustive research undertaken by Pedrajo on the life of controversial Mexican writer Pita Amor. Through this play Pedrajo, Ciangerotti, and Vitoria create a rich and highly complex character that raises questions about the stereotype of Pita as an egotistical and hysterical madwoman. In the play Pita rebels against traditional social constructions of femininity, and her existential angst is underscored. It is a monologue with large doses of humor in counterpoint with the silence of the pianist (Miguel Angel Gorostietra). Presented in a small room in a bar, it allows the actress (Pedrajo) to take charge of the whole space and interact with the public. Other relevant and talented artists are Regina Orozco, Hernn del Riego, Carlos Pascual, Las hijas de Safo (Sapphos Daughters), Adriana Jimnez Moles, Montserrat Maran, Minerva Valenzuela, Anglica Rogel, Oscar Olivier, Andrs Carreo, and Mnica del Carmen, to mention a few. CONCLUSION Mexican political cabaret is open and plural. Nurtured by Teatro de Carpa, Revista, German cabaret, American stand-up comedy, opera, film iconography, and clown technique, it offers a new reading of Mexican culture. Its popularity shows the need for dialogue vis--vis the inflexibility of official Mexican culture, which tends to deny diversity through the media and highly bureaucratic cultural and political institutions. Cabaret has also achieved an important objective in going beyond political criticism to deal, through parody, with the structures, constructions, and social concerns that impact daily life. It manifests a carnivalesque mixture of the mundane and the sublime (see Bakhtin, 1989). These dynamics allow it to touch upon the most sensitive issues in the symbolic order of Mexican culture, among them gender conceptions, religion, and the various kinds of power abuse inherent in daily life. Finally, even though the political cabaret movement has clear links to the Teatro de Carpa of the early twentieth century, its opposition to neoliberalism is not a nostalgic and outdated stand based on the support of a narrow nationalism and/or an exclusive model of theater practice. These shows are part of the entertainment market in Mexico City even though the public that supports them is ideologically opposed to neoliberal economic principles (such as indiscriminate privatization and market-driven social policies) and related cultural models based on the globalized U.S. mainstream entertainment market (e.g., Televisa and TV Azteca, the two main Mexican television channels). The fact that cabaret attracts an audience beyond purely commercial entertainment is related to Slavoj ieks (2004) proposal that the organic symbolic links created by communities are gradually eliminated in favor of a single form of relationship, the economic one. For iek, the globalized postmodern

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cultural system is becoming more and more a symbolic machine without roots in which individuals, provided with a comfortable life through a market that can offer them many forms of satisfaction, are becoming passive objects (or customers) through a system that presents itself as the sole provider and originator of a healthy life. Gradually, this creates individuals who do not take the role of responsible citizens (iek, 2002). In this sense, Mexican political cabaret functions as a symbolic machine that questions this social passivity and tries to establish links with communal cultural roots. Following iek, we might see the nationalistic ideology characterizing both the PAN and the PRI (and occasionally the PRD) as pathological traces of modernity. If modern Mexican democracy refers to a subject without qualities in the sense that the alleged equality of rights (maintained only at the symbolic level, of course) indicates that there are no differences among individuals, the subject that is being symbolically uprooted searches for imaginary identities, one of which is national identity. In Porque no saben lo que hacen iek (1998) attempts to understand the status of pleasure within ideological discourse, and this could easily be applied to the nationalistic discourse so common in Mexico. The unquestioned Mexican nation thus becomes an enjoyable imaginary community that provides both identification and pathological enthusiasm while hiding basic social antagonisms (e.g., class struggles, marginalization of indigenous cultures, and gender inequality), as well as the uprooting of traditional symbolic networks. Therefore, it is not surprising that political cabaret shows have a tendency to question this dogmatic form of nationalism, insisting on difficult topics that are superficially treated and/or dismissed by the media such as abortion rights, homosexuality, violence against women, indigenous rights, and sexual abuse by members of the Church. All of these are issues with the potential to destabilize the pathological and authoritarian Mexican symbolic nationalism. Political cabaret thus provides a communal symbolic space for reconstructing a symbolic order that is multiple, complex, critical, highly enjoyable, and attuned to Mexican reality. In Latin American culture there has always been the need for critical spaces of symbolic representation. This clearly applies to theater, which going back to Greek tragedy and pre-Hispanic drama forms has always been characterized by a live and ritual connection to the daily life experiences of the collectivity (see Vernant and Vidal-Naquet, 1989; Lpez Austin, 1989; Matos Moctezuma, 2006; and Len Portilla, 2005). The multifaceted productions of cabaret artists studied here demonstrate the essentially hybrid and queer soul of Mexican culture as a whole. Mexican cabaret as a dramatic text of the culture calls into question nationalistic collective models, and its unique outsider position allows it to propose alternatives to the uniform cultural production of subjectivities and sexualities. In doing so, it calls attention to the fragmentation and multiplicity of Mexican reality and especially to the need for nondogmatic and queer perceptions of it.

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