“El Corrido de Jesus Pelado Rasquachi,” or “The Ballad of Jesus the Underdog, ” a traditional folk song that has been altered through the years to tell the peoples’ news, bellowed through the EMU Ballroom on Wednesday as El Teatro Campesino evoked the emotions of the audience while telling about the need for migrant worker’s rights.
MEChA brought El Teatro Campesino to the University this year for the first time for Chicano Explosion, an annual talent show put on by the student group for the past seven years, MEChA director David Jaimes said.
El Teatro Campesino is a farm workers theater group founded in 1965 by Luis Valdez during Cesar Chavez’s farm workers’ rights movement. Valdez is best known for his play “Zoot Suit” in 1978, which is the only Chicano play to reach Broadway, and for his film “La Bamba,” which is still one of the most successful Chicano films, managing director Anahuac Valdez said.
“It is sad how underrepresented Chicanos are,” he said.
The theater group has traveled all over the United States and Europe for two generations and has put on numerous plays.
“Many of us who are performing now toured with the first generation when we were four and five years old,” Anahuac Valdez said. “I traveled with my father, and now we have young ones with us.”
At Chicano Explosion on Wednesday, El Teatro Campesino performed “La Carpa de los Rasquachis,” a musical written by Valdez and members from the theater from 1973 to 1978.

The group performed the final version of the play in 1978, and it basically went underground for the next 24 years. El Teatro Campesino revived the play because the issue of Mexican farm workers’ rights has never disappeared or been solved.
“We brought in El Teatro Campesino to show the community about farm workers’ issues and how we should be doing something about them,” Jaimes said. “We just wanted to provide some form of education so a dialogue can form around these issues.”
The play represents one man’s journey to the United States to work in the fields in hopes of a better life, and two characters, a devil and a skeleton, portray the evil holding back this young man’s freedom. The devil has many different roles throughout the play, including a border control officer, drug dealer and farm owner, while the skeleton helps sneak the migrant worker into the United States.
“The devil and the skeleton in the play represent the abuse of power, and the doubt and insecurity they inflict on others prevents human beings from being thought of as sacred,” Valdez said. “The devil is the boss, and the skeleton is the little boss, and then there is just everybody else, and they don’t matter.”
As for the talent portion of the show, MEChA members Julissa Vasquez, Alina Hernandez, Zenia Leyva, Mayra Gomez, Andrea Rodriguez and Linda Rizza did a skit called “Las Marias,” a female version of the El Teatro Campesino’s play “Los Bendidos.” The skit played off of society’s stereotypes of Mexican women, and at the end they show a non-traditional, true Mexican-American intellectual and bilingual woman.
“We didn’t use ‘Los Bendidos’ because it didn’t include women, and we thought it was a little outdated, so we changed the original play,” Vasquez said.
Six members of Ganas, a group from Jefferson Middle School that MEChA tutors, danced to Jennifer Lopez’s “It Ain’t So Funny” in matching red tops and jeans.
MEChA member Isaac Torres did a musical performance with bongo drums to the song “Alien (Hold Onto Your Dreams)” by Gil Scott Heron in both Spanish and English. MEChA member Jesus Garcia did a rap number to a piece he wrote, while North Eugene High School ninth grader Maria Montoya made her singing debut with “Como la Flor” by Selena.
A free salsa and merengue dance preceded the event at 7:30 p.m. in the EMU Ballroom with DJ Mario Mora.