(2) the organizational support of the
national theater must be from within
and totally independent;
(3) “Teatros must never get away
from La Raza [the people]....If the Raza
will not come to the theater, then the the-
ater must go to the Raza. This, in the long
run, will determine the shape, style, con-
tent, spirit and form of el teatro chicano.”
The influence of Teatro Campesino
was not limited to Chicanos. In New
York, Teatro Cuatro, an improvisational
street theater named after its location on
Fourth Avenue on the Lower East Side,
brought together Puerto Rican,
Dominican and other Latin American
actors to produce a politically radical
people’s theater aimed at raising the con-
sciousness of working-class Latinos,
across nationality lines.
Another important development in
Latino theater in New York was the
emergence of the Nuyorican movement.
The term Nuyorican means “New York
Puerto Rican” and does not signify a
specific type of theater. In fact,
Nuyorican productions ranged from
improvised street theater to works by
individual Puerto Rican New Yorkers
that were produced for Joseph Papp’s
Shakespeare Festival or even Broadway.
In fact, it was a group of poets associat-
ed with both Papp and the Nuyorican
Poet’s Café on the Lower East Side that
best exemplified the movement. These
writers, including Miguel Algarin, Lucky
Cienfuegos, Tato Laviera and Miquel
Piñero, focused on the life and culture of
underclass Puerto Ricans in New York.
In 1974, Piñero’s prison drama Short
Eyes,won an Obie and New York Drama
Critics Award for Best American Play.
The national teatro movement
reached its peak in 1976, when five
teatro festivals were held to commemo-
rate the American bicentennial. By the
1980s, many Chicano theater groups
began to disband, as individual members
left to join community theater compa-
nies with larger budgets, steadier fund-
ing sources, and better facilities. Valdez
himself reached mainstream audiences
first with his play Zoot Suit,which
appeared on Broadway in 1979. He then
directed the Ritchie Valens biopic La
Bambain 1987, and wrote and directed
an updated television movie version of
The Cisco Kidin 1994, starring Jimmy
Smits and Cheech Marin.Hispanic Americans in Film
As discussed in Chapter 6, the Cisco Kid
character dates back to the early days of
Hollywood. Hispanic Americans in film
fell into one of a limited number of
racially stereotyped roles—the dark lady,
the bandido, the buffoon, or, as illustrat-
ed by Cisco, the caballero. In each case,
each character reinforced a message that
the Hispanic was outside of the main-
stream, outside of majority Anglo-
American values.
During the war years, Hollywood
continued to present Hispanic carica-
tures in support of the perceived majori-
ty values. In 1941, Nelson D. Rockefeller,
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
(CIAA) for Franklin Roosevelt, asked
Walt Disney make a goodwill tour of
Mexico, Central and South America, in
keeping with the administration’s Good
Neighbor Policy, and the strong desire to
prevent any Latin American nations from
allying with the Axis Powers. As part of
the tour, Disney introduced two new
films, featuring Hispanic characters. The
first film, Saludos Amigos,featured José
Carioca, a Brazilian parrot and friend to
Donald Duck. The film was so successful
that Disney released a sequel, The Three
Caballeros,which added a third character,
Panchito, a Mexican rooster. Together,
José Carioca, Donald Duck and Panchito,
symbolized what the United States was
promoting as the close friendship
between Brazil, the United States and
Mexico. Although the films played to
cartoon stereotypes, they were extremely
popular both in Latin America and in the
United States. Mexicans appreciated that
The Three Caballerospresented Mexican
traditions such as piñata parties and
Christmas posadasin a positive light.
Between the end of the war and the
late 1960s, Hollywood Westerns provid-
ed Hispanic actors with work, but outside
of Westerns, roles were generally limited
to bit parts. Often, Anglo actors played
Hispanic characters. Burt Lancaster, for
example, starred in Valdez is Coming,
Marlon Brando was Mexican revolution-
ary Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata,Eli
Wallach played the bandit Calvera, in
The Magnificent Seven,and Paul Newman
played the Hispanic lead in The Outrage.
In 1962’s film version of West Side Story,
the Broadway musical about a clash
between white and Puerto Rican gangs,164 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY