| This study examines the neoliberal debate and its manifestations in Mexican political theater from 1982 to 1998. Decades after President Cárdenas expropriated Mexican oil fields, the financial crisis of 1982 led to an equally dramatic economic revolution: the move toward a “free”-market, privatized economy that has forever changed the political climate in Mexico. Mexican plays, in both scripts and performance, act out neoliberal anxiety, validating the importance of the economic changes that have taken Mexico by storm.; In chapter 1, I analyze Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda by Sabina Berman; chapter 2 treats Todos somos Marcos by Vicente Leñero. Both plays evoke the images of revolutionary heroes. They also, in very different ways, respond to the uncomfortable juxtaposition of Revolutionary principles and neoliberal ideology in present-day Mexico.; In the third chapter I highlight the history of neoliberalism in Mexico and then examine Muerte deliberada de cuatro neoliberales by Alejandra Trigueros and Los ejecutivos by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda. In Muerte deliberada, a group of Mexican economics students studying at Harvard and MIT are challenged by two “hippies”—also Mexican—as they discuss the social costs of the economic models the neoliberals imitate. Los ejecutivos exposes the Mexican banking fiasco—one of the failures of privatization—and the arrival of “downsizing” to Mexico, emphasizing the crisis of modernization in Mexico.; In the fourth chapter I analyze a play that portrays the absurdity of Mexico's employment crisis. Sabina Berman's La grieta presents the nonsensical challenge of working within a political system that promises economic miracles but delivers only despair.; The final chapter treats La Malinche by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, which takes place in the Mexican Congress. This play underscores the circularity of history, replacing Cortés and his soldiers with US beach tourists. In this play, as in the others, the signs on stage are ambiguous, leaving room for each spectator to complement the performance and to personalize the theatrical experience. |
