Tú eres mi otro yo/You are my other me.
Si te hago daño a ti/If I do harm to you,
Me hago daño a mí mismo/I do harm to myself;
Si te amo y respeto/If I love and respect you,
Me amo y respeto yo/I love and respect myself.
That Luis Valdez poem was a sort of affirmation for Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson High Magnet School. Students opened class with it and resolved to live by it.
Then in 2010, the Arizona Legislature passed a law prohibiting school districts or charter schools from offering classes that either promote the overthrow of the U.S. government or resentment toward a race or class of people. Lawmakers said there was evidence of “racial warfare” taking place in the Tucson Unified School District as a result of Raza Studies.
Supporters countered that the courses were strictly historical analysis and students are allowed to formulate their own opinions.
Students felt deeply about the program and the message in the poem. Protests erupted; a Tucson Unified School District board meeting was disrupted by hundreds of program supporters.
Then things began to fall apart. Bitter lines were being drawn between those involved in the movement. And then it became quiet.
The dramatic fight around the MAS program is at the center of Borderland Theatre’s “Más,” which opens in previews next Thursday.
Milta Ortiz wrote the docudrama, pulling from personal interviews, as well as those in the various media and court documents to provide a diverse and word-for-word perspective of the program’s struggle. In the director’s chair is her husband, Marc David Pinate, who took on the role of Borderlands’ producing director when founder Barclay Goldsmith stepped down last year.
We spoke with them about the play “Más” (Spanish for “more”), and what made the MAS movement so theatrical.
The setting: A sweat lodge, with characters in a circle, which is the way students often sat in MAS classes. “It just hit me one day — that’s what it is,” says Ortiz. “The play is actually a redemptive remembrance in a sweat lodge, that cleansing ritual.”
It makes perfect sense, says Pinate, “Because this whole issue has been such a wound for the community, and because there is a lot of healing to do.”
The rituals: Pinate is a fan of ritualistic theater, and he uses dancers and other elements to help realize the story. Audience members will have the option to be smudged with sage when they enter the theater, mirroring the sweat lodge traditon. They will also be asked to walk in a clockwise direction, as is also done in the sweat lodge. Masks by master mask-maker Zarco Guerrero will be worn by dancers representing the four Mayan deities that keep the earth in balance.
None of this is done in a vacuum — Pinate’s notes and other explanations about the ritual will be in the program.
The ritualistic style is also a device to give audiences lots of information without losing them. It’s a device that Pinate has long embraced and staged.
Getting a balance: Ortiz longed to include all voices in her script — both pro and con. Her intent isn’t to demonize one side or the other. But she says the more conservative voices would not interview with her.
“It was challenging because I didn’t get to interview anyone from the conservative side and actually portray them as full characters who really believed in what they were doing,” says Ortiz. “My intention in writing the play was to humanize everyone.”
So she relied on court records and other public documents for the comments of John Huppenthal, Arizona’s then-superintendent of public instruction, and Mark Stegeman, president of the TUSD governing board, both of whom successfully sought to cancel the MAS program.
“What’s out there lends itself to villainizing them,” says Ortiz. “But this is what they truly believe. Every time I left an interview, I thought, ‘This person is doing what they think is morally right, absolutely believes in what they are doing.’ And I think that was the same case in the conservative power structure.”
Dealing with the fractures in the movement: Rifts in the struggle were caused when teachers and community members fighting the ban became divisive about how to go forward. There seemed to be a final big break when a student accused a documentary filmmaker of assault. Those fissures are also part of this story.
“There was a difference in ideologies amongst the activists and teachers,” says Pinate. “Not only about the strategy of the movement to save the program, but the strategy in the classroom.”
What they hope audiences take with them: “How complicated and complex the work is, and how it is not done yet,” says Ortiz.
Pinate wants the play to provide the clarity that couldn’t come from news stories and word of mouth.
They provided “a few sound bites to understand a very complicated issue,” he says.
He also hopes for a bit of healing. “For me, it is about the toll the struggle took on the community,” he says.
“The play aims to understand that need to speak up for yourself,” says Ortiz. “I think the takeaway is that we need people on all fronts doing the work, and how do we work with our differences, and together, to effect change.”
