CULTURE CLASH
Produced by Paul Espinosa
CHARLESTON HESTON (from "Touch of Evil")
I'm no cop now, I'm her husband. What did you do with her? Where is my wife? My wife!
NARRATION
The border has always held a special fascination in the American psyche … and the arts have led the way in revealing the texture of that image – dark, brooding, wild, unbridled desire – at the border – la frontera as its called in Spanish … the frontier where civilization ends and barbarism begins.
SAM WOODHOUSE OC
If you take "Touch of Evil," that idea of seeing shadows in the background, and characters lurking in the background, and the whole approach to lighting in that film was, was an attempt, I think, to create a sense of, of certainly, mystery, and a sense of that there’s something lurking on the other side of what I can see that is very different than me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
RICHARD MONTOYA
There’s Mexican nationals running all over the freeway. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Are you with me, Del Mar?
NARRATION
Richard Montoya, Herbert Siguenza and Ric Salinas are theater artists who form a group called Culture Clash. They are in rehearsal for a new play titled "Bordertown" commissioned by the San Diego Repertory Theatre.
SAM WOODHOUSE
Cause that's part of what this play is about. Is "What is this world coming to?"
NARRATION
As they develop their play, Culture Clash is trying to create characters who can help them break down the common stereotypes which the media has associated with the border.
The largest pair of twin cities on the border are San Diego and Tijuana, with a combined population of around four million residents.
Culture Clash has come here to look for characters to inhabit their play, characters who represent key aspects of what these two cities are all about.
RICHARD MONTOYA
Attention! Liberty, boys!
NARRATION
Tijuana was visited by countless young American men while they were stationed in San Diego for military service. Culture Clash dramatizes their experiences using Frank Sinatra’s classic tune "South of the Border."
[Frank Sinatra song plays, "South of the Border"]
SAM WOODHOUSE VO
Culture Clash is one of the premier theatrical, political, satirical ensembles in America...they are dealing with and addressing issues of race, of ethnicity, of language, of culture...they address the issue of who owns this place we live in.
NARRATION
To create material for their play, Culture Clash interviewed over 100 people in both San Diego and Tijuana. After talking to people from all walks of life, they are combining these interviews into different characters whose lives can be presented on stage.
HERBERT SIGUENZA OC
And when we came down to San Diego and the stereotype is that it's just about the border, it's just about Tijuana. Although that is a very big part of this play, we're also finding other voices in San Diego; voices that I had no idea existed here.
RIC SALINAS OC
And we start interviewing them with a video camera, a tape recorder, and notes and we talk to them for about an hour.
RICHARD MONTOYA OC
So you really have to take on that role almost as a journalist, an archaeologist, and a playwright because your really doing an excavation of a region.
SAM WOODHOUSE OC
It’s Culture Clash’s imaginative response to what they heard in the testimonies by the people of our region.
RIC SALINAS OC
The most surprising thing is that Mexico is only fifteen minutes away VO and still people in San Diego, don’t consider San Diego a bordertown.
RIC SALINAS VO
We actually interviewed a psychologist from Tijuana and we asked her, well then, give us a, if you were a psychiatrist what would you say to Tijuana and San Diego if you were a psychiatrist analyzing these two cities as people. And that's what gave us the idea of doing the skit. So we put San Diego with the American flag and Tijuana with the Mexican flag and they were a married couple.
SAM WOODHOUSE VO
No matter what we do people are gonna think there goes OC the U.S.
****ing Mexico, come on, that's what... that's what the image is.
RIC SALINAS
But we are doing a thing, I mean, is it violent? Is it bored? I agree with what your questions are, but...
SAM WOODHOUSE How do you feel about it? Do you enjoy it? Do you relish it?
HERBERT SIGUENZA
We gotta try it. We gotta try it different ways.
SAM WOODHOUSE
Give her a kiss...
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Right now, I'm definitely being...almost raped.
RIC SALINAS
What if you do this Herbert. You know when you do this your putting up with it.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
The border is political....a symbol, an imposing monument impressed into our conscience.
Husband?
RIC SALINAS
What is it, wife?
HERBERT SIGUENZA
I love you. Do you love me?
RIC SALINAS
I do love her. I need her. But I'm embarrassed of her. I cheat on her, I take advantage of her. I'm very secretive around her. Her Catholic upbringing somehow allows my dark Protestant south to rear itself virtually unchecked.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
I want to leave you. You're such an arrogant bastard. You're so thoughtless. Why are you so abusive?
RIC SALINAS
Tijuana, I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you. You need me, your children need me, and God knows how many of them you have!
HERBERT SIGUENZA
And what about your children, eh? They come to dream, to eat, to laugh, to soil. They get their fill and leave; they don't know me! They don't respect me!
RIC SALINAS
Honey, how could they respect you when you can't respect yourself?
SAM WOODHOUSE VO
There are a lot of references in the piece that are local, that to other people won’t mean anything, but the core issues OC of, "who’s that over there, what are they doing and what does it mean to me?", which is really what it’s about, VO that relationship to "the other" was permeating a great many of the scenes that we did in Border Town.
NARRATION
As they explore the region, Culture Clash has looked for creative ways to capture the characters who live here. Some of these characters are unusual choices, like Shamu, the killer whale at Sea World.
RIC SALINAS (AS SHAMU)
Well, the other day I was swimming around with some other mammals, you know, shooting the breeze, blowing some salt water, coming down from the show bus. Well, all of a sudden, I heard some trainers yapping away on how disappointed they were about my performances! That I was bringing the team down with my negative attitude, right? Well, then I couldn't believe what my sonar was picking up. The park director wants to bring here some Mexican killer whales. Now mind you these Mexican killer whales have no documentation, no training, no, no papers, no working permits. But they work for cheap and they eat less fish.
ROGER HEDGECOCK
...branded as racists for our concerns about law and order at the Border, being at least as concerned about the integrity of the Border of the United States as George Bush was about the integrity of the border of Kuwait.
NARRATION
Culture Clash finds another unusual character in the San Diego media, a conservative radio talk show host who uses his show as a platform to discuss the so-called invasion from the south.
SAM WOODHOUSE OC
When you enter into San Diego, one of the most controversial characters is Roger Hedgecock. You know, he’s paid to be provocative and inflammatory and extremely political, and to, you know, carry the first amendment to the, the extreme.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
This is the world's largest small town. OK, there's two hundred people who think they run the city and they don't like it when I stir up the people. See folks, in a democracy, you're supposed to stir up the people.
SAM WOODHOUSE VO
So we tried to do a parody, a satirical take-off of this consciously inflammatory radio personality.
HERBERT SIGUENZA OC
I've never been in a city so big where I've heard radio that is so, so shallow and so small minded. And it's really sad because people are tuning in and readily agreeing with these people that Mexicans are a threat, that they are taking our jobs, that they are ruining our economy, when, when in fact it's the total opposite.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Are you with me Del Mar?
RICHARD MONTOYA
I just wanna ask you a couple of quick questions.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Sure, go ahead shoot.
RICHARD MONTOYA
How about Alex Spanos, man.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
All right, uh Greek immigrant. Did very well in this country by the way, uh... go back to Greece.
SAM WOODHOUSE
We perceive him as a racist, but that's not his perception. He's talking about whatever; the loss of law and order or the something.
RICHARD MONTOYA VO
We're handling these polarized subjects like immigration, diversity. I mean these are things that California is absolutely frozen on. But we're handling it in a way with humor, and music, and pathos that just allows people to break down those certain barriers to look at something.
RICHARD MONTOYA
Immigration?
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Simple! Let's go back to the bracero program, it worked. Up front at the border you declare hey I'm gonna go pick peaches and then I'm going home. Simple.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
He doesn't think he's being racist, but he says you know I'm gonna go, listen I'm gonna go pick peaches and then I'm gonna go home. Like all Mexicans go pick peaches it's like, you know the little Oaxacan guys with M-16's. I mean where does he get this imagery, you know.
NARRATION
Culture Clash doesn't limit itself to the present as it wrestles with icons of popular culture. Taking a page from the region's history, they created an historical character named Sidewinder Sam.
RICHARD MONTOYA
Folks! Spreckels and Horton; no one's done more for our city than them! I'm gettin' a little teary eyed...
NARRATION
In their reconstruction of border history, Culture Clash uses Sidewinder Sam to challenge the official history of San Diego founders, John Spreckels and Alonzo Horton.
RICHARD MONTOYA
(singing) Spreckels and Horton were two great white men.
SAM WOODHOUSE VO
Sidewinder Sam is, of course, is a very funny, comedic piece, which is playing with the idolatry of great, Anglo historical figures,
RICHARD MONTOYA
Holy s***! I thought we run all you banditeers back to Tijuana and Tecate.
RICHARD MONTOYA VO
San Diego is a place that is built layer upon layer, on top of its history, so making those connections with the past are that much more difficult. There's a lot of coats of paint over that adobe, you know and so we're just trying to scrape that off.
RIC SALINAS
Read this gringo!
RICHARD MONTOYA
Spreckels and Horton were just two men of means who were opportunists and bought their way into city government and made the place Republican, what is this bull****!
SAM WOODHOUSE VO
It’s a funny way of saying we need to pay attention to a lots of different kinds of kinds of people, those at the top of the economic spectrum and those at the bottom.
RICHARD MONTOYA
We must also not forget Mexican nannies, dishwashers, and busboys of the Gaslamp district. You can't compare Spreckels and Horton with Jose the Mexican bus boy.
RIC SALINAS
Oh yes I can!
NARRATION
As they survey the media images of the region, Culture Clash discovers that perhaps the most pervasive image of the border is that of undocumented immigrants being apprehended as they cross the border. In the last several years, as federal policies have become more enforcement oriented, immigrants have begun to cross the border further and further inland, through isolated desert lands. In response, the ranchers and homeowners who live in this region have started to arm themselves.
RICHARD MONTOYA
You're a vigilante?
HERBERT SIGUENZA
I've been called worse.
RICHARD MONTOYA
Have you ever had to kill or shoot somebody?
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Shot at a couple of guys. Maybe I killed them, maybe I didn't.
RICHARD MONTOYA
How do you feel about the militarization of the border?
HERBERT SIGUENZA
The what?
RICHARD MONTOYA
The global economy as it affects the border. Maybe you heard about the young seventeen year old Texas boy who was shot dead by Marines patrolling the border
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Oh! Get out of here!
RICHARD MONTOYA
No come on, we listen to you, why don't you...Now come on! We listen to you, now we've got...let me have that Rick. We've got over three hundred cases here, sir. These are factual documented truthful cases of border abuses by INS agents. INS agents holding people to detain themselves for ten days with only water. Border patrol agents abusing, beating, men women and children because they look Mexican and they happen to be U.S. citizens. Does that ring a bell? I mean, you know, I'd really like to know something here sir. Aside from the patriotic bull****, why do you dress up like Rambo and why do you patrol the border? No, no, no. I wanna know. I wanna know.
HERBERT SIGUENZA
Truth is I'm scared.
RICHARD MONTOYA
(laughs)
HERBERT SIGUENZA
I'm scared for my country, I'm scared for my daughter. I have the right to be scared don't I?
RICHARD MONTOYA
That's bull****! That's bull****!
RICHARD MONTOYA OC
These plays mean something to us right now. There’s something historical in them, something very in the present and urgent and something that might tell us a little bit about our future. And only by bringing life to these various characters are we able to do that. The very act of that alone is empowering.
HERBERT SIGUENZA VO
Our marriage is political. It is a physically imposing monument...a symbol impressed into our consciousness. Cruzar cerco. I cross the fence. This is a spiritual passage. At a specific space of struggle and transgression. It is that between fiction, and nonfiction.
HERBERT SIGUENZA VO
I think we really represent the good and the bad of Tijuana and the contradictions of Tijuana. Tijuana has immense contradictions, as well as San Diego. We're showing those contradictions of both cities and I think people will sit down and say "yeah, that's true, that is true." This is really, you know these are the things we have to work on and these are the things that we should be very proud of. There is that tension between these two cities. They really are, they are married. San Diego and Tijuana are married but it's a marriage on the rocks.
NARRATION
In their play, Bordertown, Culture Clash has offered their interpretation of the region. But culturally and artistically, the image of the border will continue to be under construction, a work in progress of the soul and of the imagination.
FADE TO BLACK