We started thinking about a region of the world that we didn’t know about, one that is very close to us and very far away at the same time. We traveled, we read, we asked and we listened.

We knew that we wanted to make a book to share what we were learning and a play about our encounter with that territory.
But everything took an unexpected turn when we met M—— and she asked us to do her a favor in the country where she was born, where she always lived and to which she now cannot return.

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Centroamérica is an artistic research project about the Central American region, it is a play and a book.

We seek to approach a region to which Mexico has historically turned its back.
The publication will be the result of our approach to the history of this part of the continent and staging an approach to the present of the region, through our experience there.

Central America is a region that in Mexico we know little about, it is not part of our imagination or our fantasies. A set of seven countries, a denomination, a poetic intention, a stigma. We are distant neighbors, because in Mexico we look north, always north.

If Mexico has been seen as the backyard of the Empire, how do we see Central America from Mexico? That territory that is captured between two complicated borders: on the one hand the Darién Gap, a dense and closed jungle on the limits of Colombia and Panama; on the other, the margins of Belize and Guatemala that, due to US pressure on Mexico, have been militarized and have become a violent obstacle for migrants.

Central America is a mirror that, beyond showing us an exact reflection, has become a premonition. In the isthmus there have been and continue to be measures that rehearse the future, as if it were a field of experimentation: the Panama Canal, the US interventions, the banana fields, Bitcoin, the dreams of revolution, the dictatorships that return again and again, the special zones for industrial and business development, the gangs, the exoduses and migrations.

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For many years our work has tried to think about reality. Our projects have addressed politics as a way of putting on the table certain issues that seem fundamental to us. We wanted theater to raise awareness and we trusted that this could transform reality. But this project forced us to try something different.

This project is an attempt to bridge the gap between art and life.

Performance and coordination: Luisa Pardo y Lázaro G. Rodríguez
Space and light design: Sergio López Vigueras
Design and production of curtains: Pedro Pizarro
Director assistant: Macaria Reyes
General assistant : Janet Vázquez y Manu Guerrero
Poster image: Cecilia Porras Saénz
“María”: Ella fuerte
stock images: Filmoteca de la UNAM
Images of Nicaragua 2018: Rafael Camacho y Chilly Smit
Testimonies: Dora María Téllez, Gabriela Selser, Rafael Camacho y hombres y mujeres nicaragüenses exiliadas que han contado sus historias pero no pueden ser nombradas por cuestiones de seguridad.
Una producción de Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol con la colaboración de Centro Cultural España en México, Teatro Casa de la Paz, UAM. Théâtre Joliette y Théâtre de Lenche, Marseille, y Pontificia universidad Católica del Perú.