"Playing at Border-Crossing in a Mexican Indigenous Community. Seriously.": A talk by Tamara Underiner March 12, 2009

This presentation describes El Parque Eco-Alberto's Caminata Nocturna - a live simulation in which tourists are offered the experience of crossing the Mexico/U.S border. Taking place in Hidalgo, Mexico, some thousand miles from the "real" border, the Caminata Nocturna has been criticized as a "training camp" for illegal migration to the United States. Underiner argues instead that it functions as a highly politicized, indigenous community performance aimed at cultural preservation and assertion, which are both threatened and enabled by the scenario of migration. Part role-reversing representation, part embodied participation, part ritual of solidarity, the Caminata produces communitas in the liminal space of a simulated border in the dead of night. It offers community members and tourists alike a temporary escape from our identity positions, and from the power differentials that help to define them. For this community of Hñahñu speakers, the majority of whom have crossed the border to the U.S. and back, the Caminata's dramaturgy both symbolically and materially refigures the relationship between Mexican indigeneity and Mexican citizenship. For those who "cross" in this simulation, and for those who think about what it might mean, it offers new perspectives on social affiliation and belonging - offered in a bi-national, tri-cultural key.

Tamara Underiner is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Arizona State University's School of Theatre and Film, where she also directs the Ph.D. concentration in Theatre and Performance of the Americas, and teaches in the general areas of theatre history and culture studies. Her most recent work is Contemporary Theatre in Mayan Mexico: Death-Defying Acts (University of Texas Press, 2004). She is currently at work on a project exploring performances of nativism on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Official Website: http://www.ias.umn.edu/thursdayscals09.php