Planting the Seeds of Theatre to Imagine Autonomous Spaces

Abstract

This text addresses the theatrical practices carried out in the Zapotec community of Santiago Xanica, in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, Mexico, based on the development of the Sembrando Teatro workshop, which has been held since 1997. The participants used theater in the region as a strategy for visibility that defined their conditions for appearance and subsequent action. When they became involved in the 1998 electoral conflict, they opposed the partisan interference imposed by the state in their municipality’s elections. Subsequently, they created the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Peoples and developed a training center and a solidarity life laboratory at the Finca Alemania space, establishing an autonomous educational center from preschool to high school, as well as twelve productive and artistic workshops, which fostered alternative forms of relationship between culture, theater, politics and pedagogy.