Staging Politics in Mexico: The Road to Neoliberalism (review)

204 LATINAMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW Day, StuartA. Staging Politics in Mexico: The Road to Neoliberalism. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2004: 179 p. Despite assertions to the contrary, few books in our field are truly interdisciplinary. More often than not, we overlay literary analyses with some of the more accessible terminology of another field. Stuart A. Day’s Staging Politics in Mexico, however, is an exception. Day integrates literary analysis with an insightful understanding of economic theories and practices, focusing on plays that deal with the period, roughly between 1982-2002, when Mexico’s leaders began implementing neoliberal policies. Each play examines facets of the advantages and disadvantages related to the replacement of some state-run economies with neoliberal practices. In the introduction, Day presents a well-balanced economic, political and aesthetic debate. He convincingly shows that this is not a left- vs. right-wing issue and that the terms liberal and conservative have undergone considerable semantic evolution. Moreover, Day succinctly outlines both sides of the issue as they are presented by economic theorists and the playwrights themselves. To prepare the reader for what all the plays have in common, Day summarizes the impacts, both positive and negative, that privatization, austerity programs and free markets have had on Mexican society. In the first chapter, Day analyzes Sabina Berman’s Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda (1993) in terms of the characters’stances vis-à-vis neoliberalism.Adrián, a history professor writing a biography about Pancho Villa, represents the ineffectual left, attached to outdated revolutionary values. Adrián’s girlfriend, Gina, gains economic and emotional independence by opening up a maquiladora, thereby embracing neoliberal economics. The childish and playful Ismael, perhaps representing Mexico’s future, constructs toys. Whether or not those toys will stay at home for Mexican children or be exported to the States remains to be seen. Todos somos Marcos, by Vicente Leñero (1995), is the focus of chapter 2. Set in the aftermath of the government’s revelation of the zapatista leader’s identity, this play examines three characters’deliberations about living in Mexico City. When thousands of demonstrators flock to the street shouting that they are Marcos, the clandestine revolutionary comes too close for comfort. Two men, arm-chair liberals, think that their friend, Laura, takes her politics too seriously when she expresses solidarity with the zapatistas by moving to Chiapas. Especially intriguing in this chapter is Day’s analysis of the (un)masking of Marcos’s and the characters’ true identities. Chapter 3 contains analyses of two plays. In Muerte deliberada de cuatro neoliberales by Alejandra Triguero (1997), four graduate students and two hippies gather for a dinner party in an apartment in Boston, where three of the neoliberals are pursuing advanced degrees in economics at Harvard. In a heated debate, the characters expound on the relative merits of US influence in Mexico. As suggested by the title, a bomb literally wipes the political slate clean. Nina, the sole survivor, is SPRING 2006 205 the only one without a definite opinion on neoliberalism. Muerte deliberada offers no inkling as to what sort of choices Nina will make. Rather, the reader is left to conjecture on the character’s and Mexico’s future. The second play, Los ejecutivos by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda (1995), focuses on two victims of downsizing in a recently-privatized bank. The main characters embody two possible attitudes regarding neoliberalism. Charly dresses and acts like a bona fide yuppie. Richard remains faithful to his middle-class Mexican roots. Neither man, however, is protected from the neoliberal system. Mistakes made by those in upper management result in the dismissal of both. Chapter 4 deals with La grieta by Sabina Berman (1994). Two characters decide to trade in their alternative dreams only to realize that the mainstream teeters on political and economic instability. Perhaps their momentous decision to sell out is all for naught. Day expertly draws parallels between the crack in the ceiling of a downtown office and the fissure in the PRI. Both reveal a faulty infrastructure which, despite everyone’s attempts to ignore it, widens as the play progresses. Eventually, the decaying structure comes tumbling down. The spectator is left to...