Está escrita en sus campos

“Humanity has used drugs since the dawn of time. In the last hundred years, different American governments have headed and imposed a prohibitory regime over the consumption of certain plants and chem- ical products, sustained on racism and leaving aside health problems.
The history of Mexican drug traf- ficking is also the history of these pro- hibitory policies.
In the last decades the circumstance has changed radically, substances have diversified, consumption has increased, and violence has deepened. Organizations have transformed and managed to weave networks in and out of the three government levels.
This project is an attempt at mapping a territory which I do not recognize, a tale of a history which I’m not familiar with, an effort to re–appropriate a country. «

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, 2014

Está escrita en sus campos [It is written in it’s fields] is a theatrical piece in which I [Francisco Barreiro] attempted, on one hand, to explain the problem of drug trafficking in Mexico through- out the last century by way of the prohibitory policies of the United States; and on the other, to create a false documentary along with a brief concert about the life of a rapper and drug dealer which I named “El Tigre”.
I was interested in creating a junction between the personal and the collective. Macrohistory and microhistory.
This piece was preceded by Escondidos en el llano (los últimos 30 años del narcotráfico en México) [Hidden in the plain (the last thirty years of drug trafficking in Mexico)] which was performed only once, in October 2011, at Naves Matadero in Madrid, Spain.
I wanted to broaden both the information and some of the ideas discovered during that project.
El Tigre’s story is a fiction inspired by different real events I had gathered and anecdotes from the life of the rapper Mauricio Hernández “Aczino”, who also played the character in a video and composed the six songs I performed during the play.
I presented a series of reenacted interviews with his “family and friends” (two actresses, an actor and my cousin) hiding their faces, showing different versions of a same event.
I wanted to explore the idea of a protagonist’s presence, to pre- tend it was him on stage, deleting the frontiers of representation. I was also interested in having this idea of presence in a monologue disappear in the middle during of the play.
I constructed the story of drug trafficking in Mexico through fragments of several other authors. It was shown in two TV sets and a 4 by 4 meters screen, using a narrator, archival footage, an animated map of the Mexican territory which changed throughout the story, and interviews with two specialists, whose faces were also hidden, John Gibler and Diego Enrique Osorno.
With this piece, aside from the historical research and the reconstruction of an issue that is still happening, I was interested in the collision be-
tween fiction and documentary, the poetic and the natural, the multiplicity of masks and representation.
In addition to the play, Editorial Cascajo published a CD with El Tigre’s music, so his presence could be preserved beyond the stage. The songs are: “México Máxico”, “Hoy me siento bien”, “Sueño eterno”, “Primogénito”, and “Los reyes sin corona”.

Un proyecto de A project by Francisco Barreiro. • Asesoría Advisors: Gabino Rodríguez, Luisa Pardo, David Gaitán, Anabella Pareja y Mauricio Hernández • Asistencia general General assistance: Mariana Villegas • Iluminación Lighting: Sergio López Vigueras, Marcela Flores y Juanpablo Avendaño • Video, animación e Isadora Video, animation and Isadora: Carlos Gamboa y Esteban Azuela • Máscaras Masks: Gabriela Sánchez • Cancio- nes Songs: “El Tigre” • Diseño de audio Sound design: Mauricio Villalba • Fotografía Camera: Cristina Cerda • Producción Production: Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol.

Está escrita en sus campos was premiered in León, Guanajuato, during La Comuna, and was later performed in several theaters in Mexico City such as Cine Tonalá, Museo del Chopo, Teatro Legaria and Foro El Bicho. It was later performed at festivals such as Temporada Alta, Girona; Festival Ambulante Saltillo, Coahuila and FestivalINTERmedio, Xalapa; Sala Verdi, Montevideo; Timbre4, Buenos Aires; Alianza Francesa, Lima; Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich; among others.