Teatro Campesino, El

El Teatro Campesino, or the Farm Workers’ Theater, was founded in 1965 as the cultural, educational, and theatrical arm of the incipient farm workers’ union being organized by the late César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in Delano, California. Best-known for its participation in the early unionizing efforts of the 1960s, the Teatro has continued to produce important theatrical works that illuminate the sociopolitical condition of Mexicans, Chicanos, and other marginalized peoples living in the United States. Furthermore, El Teatro Campesino inspired a national network of Chicano theater groups, encouraging actors, playwrights, directors, and other theater and media artists to find their artistic and socially relevant voices.

It is impossible to discuss El Teatro Campesino without also discussing the founding director, playwright, and producer of the troupe, Luis Miguel Valdez (1940–). Although the majority of Chicanos of his generation did not complete high school, this son of migrant farm workers graduated from San Jose State College in 1964 with a degree in English. After a year of working with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Valdez returned to his birthplace and, with the blessings of Chávez and Huerta, met with a group of striking farm workers. Together, they formed El Teatro Campesino. Having learned the benefits of political street theater that employs broad, often exaggerated comic techniques with the mime troupe, Valdez guided the farm workers in improvising short, comic sketches he termed actos. The actos demonstrated the importance of joining and supporting the farm workers’ union. They became the staple of the Teatro as the troupe performed at the edges of fields, attracting workers with popular Mexican corridos (ballads) as well as original songs supporting the union cause, punctuated with their actos.

Most important, the actos were created collectively, through improvisations that dramatized and demonstrated the struggles of the humble campesino against the powerful growers and their henchmen. These actos were modern “morality plays,” with roots in the Spanish religious folk theater that has been performed in the Spanish-language communities of the United States for generations.