Border Brujo A Performance Poem (From The Series)

Border Brujo: A Performance Poem (From the Series "Documented/Undocumented") Author(s): Guillermo Gómez-Peña Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 35, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 48-66 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146131 . Accessed: 09/07/2011 02:36
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Border

Brujo

A Performance Poem (from the series"Documented/Undocumented") *

GuillermoGomez-Pena

San Diego/Tijuana 1989 I dedicatethis piece to my son, Guillermo Emiliano, hoping that when he grows up, most of these wordswill be outdated and unnecessary.

It fuses postmodern techniques with popular voices and dialectical forms borrowed from a dozen sources, such as media, tourism, pop culture, Pachuco and pinto slang, and political jargon. These voicesare intertwined with metacommentary and epic poetry. The epic tone reflects the epic experience of contemporary Mexican Americans. BorderBrujo speaks in Spanish to Mexicans, in Spanglish to Chicanos, in English to AngloAmericans, and in tongues to other brujos and border crossers. Only the perfectly bicultural can be in complicity with him. Border Brujoexorcises with the word the demons of thedominant cultures of both countries. Border Brujoarticulatesfear, desire, trauma, sublimation, anger, and misplacement. Border Brujosuffers in his own flesh the pain of his ruptured community. BorderBrujo puts a mirror between the two countries then breaksit in front of the audience.

Preface
BorderBrujo is a ritual, linguistic, and performative journey across the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Brujofirst crossed the border in costume in June of 1988. Border Brujo unfolds into 15 different personas, each speaking a different border language. And the relationship between these personas is symbolic of the one between North and South; Anglo and Latin America; myth and social reality; legality and illegality; performance art and life. The structure is disnarrative and modular, like the borderexperience.

* Workin progress The Drama Review 35, no. 3 (Ti31), Fall 1991
Guillermo Gomez-Penia wants everyone to be able to use his work so he places no limitations on its use. As far as Gomez-Pena is concerned, his

work is in the public domain.

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. Still from the film, Border Brujo, by Isaac Artenstein and Guillermo Gomez-Pena, 1990. (Photo by Max Aguilera Hellweg)

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GuillermoGomez-Pena

Tarahumara violins. Border [Soundtrack: Brujo organizes his altar table, while speaking in an Indian dialect. When he is done and fixing the altar he grabs megaphone switches to English.] dear audience BorderBrujo negotiates several artistic traditions, feel at home including performance art, Chicano theatre, rit- this continent is your home ual theatre, and Latin American...