Uroborus: The binational ritual

of violence and migration

By Guillermo Gómez-Peña, June of 2017

The signing of the Free Art Agreement. Photo: Chip Lord (from the Ant Farm) and
Gómez-Peña posing for RJ Muna (From the series “The New Barbarians”)

There is a macabre cycle of violence & migration between the US &

Mexico. It roughly goes like this:

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Hard drugs are harvested and prepared in South American clandestine
labs & then sent to Mexico for distribution by the cartels.

The goal of the Mexican cartels is to export the drugs to the US, where the
main consumers reside, but they need lots of weapons to defend
themselves, which US mercenaries & “informal” NRA traders provide them.

Cartels fight for territory & the control of distribution routes on both sides of
the border.

In this cartel wars, hundreds, thousands of Mexican civilians die every year;
while others are forced to join the ranks of competing cartels.

The relatives and friends of those who die, fearing for their lives, are forced
to migrate to the US, and the coyotes now working for the cartels charge
them an outrageous fee to get across.

But here, despite the fact that the US provides the consumption & the
weapons, right wing politicians and their media outlets portray the victims of
these wars, the migrants and exiles of violence, as enemies of the state,
criminals & rapists, & deport them back to Mexico, where their lives are at
risk and the cycle of violence continues:

The US demand for drugs continues to increase and more US weapons

continue to be sold to the Mexican crime cartels who in turn fight for more
territory & the control of distribution routes. In the process, hundreds,
thousands more civilians continue to die while others are forced to migrate
as US right wing politicians with their humongous media megaphones
continue to demonize them, ad infinitum…

Everyone involved directly or indirectly in this binational macabre ritual of

violence, from the streets and law enforcement to the presidency, knows
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about it, but they pretend to ignore it because they all benefit from it. It’s
devastating but the fact is that neither Mexico nor the US can live without
the drug trade. Our intertwined economies completely depend on it. It is
“the other global project”; the invisible North American Free Trade
Agreement.

Meanwhile, in Reality #1, we just got back from a 2-month long tour, and
we are experiencing a major post-performance blues and feel like strangers
in our own city...An honorarium payment from a major producer hasn’t
arrived and our landlord is threatening with an outrageous penalty fee.

Balitronica is ill once again from the typhoid and salmonella she contracted
in Haiti last year, but we have no health insurance to get antibiotics. She
badly needs her meds and I suddenly need 3 root canals, why now
chingao? We have to go to Mexico to get treated...but our bank account is
empty.

Checks keep bouncing back and the Verizon system that supports our
computer devices and Iphones, is down. We can’t even watch horror
movies for consolation in our Roku system. According to my indigenous
compadre James Luna, we, like most artists in the USA, are “going through
the Big Smoke.”

I go to an internet café to check my emails: As if all this weren’t enough,

since my adored mother died last year, my family in Mexico continues to
quarrel for the properties, legacy and furniture of 4 family generations, and
due to my alleged “fame,” they see me as the voice of reason and
diplomacy. If they only knew…

Our performance troupe is also in spiritual disarray. Scared of the

immediate future of funding and uncertain about their art jobs, they ask me
what’s in store for the future, but the future is bleak. In Trumplandia, history
begins when we wake up; and the future starts the morning after with a
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new “executive order” against the poor, the sick, the rebels…And the
refrigerator is empty. The rest is academic discourse.

Trump is in power & everyday feels like a new episode of a 24 hour

post-apocalyptic Reality TV show titled “The President of Chaos.”

Determined to destroy the culture and legacy of the civil rights movement,
he tweets outrageous misspelled executive orders while his cabinet
promotes anti-constitutional fascistic laws on a weekly basis. It’s hard for us
little artist-citizens to process the changes. That is precisely Trump’s main
strategy; to keep us confused and wear us out.

The much touted “silent majority” is now an army of exalted racists and
homophobes. These new American jihadists are ready to kick our ass.
They believe that the right to bear and use arms is more important than the
1st amendment in defining democracy. And they are everywhere, even in
universities, art openings and dive bars. We simply can’t escape them, and
they want to fight.

Even Alonso Pepito “Orlak,” our teacup Chihuahua, along with the stars in
the San Francisco night sky, are sad. The diarrhea doesn’t help and the
toothaches are getting worse. We are trying to keep our style and our
dignity intact, but it’s hard, and the macabre ritual cycle of binational
migration and violence continues…

...bla-bla-bla, bla-bla-bla, bla-bla-bla, bla-bla-bla…per ipsum, ecu nipsum,

eti nipsum; per omnia saecula, saeculeros, amen