Annotations for Geographic: Delano Ca

To whom it may concern, there is an interest in establishing a bilingual community farm workers theater.

The primary aim of this theater would be to belong to the workers themselves.

It is time the Raza landed the artistic blow it is capable of giving.

Those interested in attending an organizational meeting, please sign below.

The place was Delano, California.

This was the text of a leaflet which announced the formation of a theater troupe quite unlike any before.

It was influenced by La Barraca, the 1930s traveling theater of Spain's Federico García Lorca, by the Mexican burlesque style known as Carpa, and by the work of the German playwright Bertholt Brecht.

But the actual spark that led to the founding of El Teatro Campesino was something known simply as La Huelga, the farm workers movement for social justice.

Now the night that I left San Francisco for Delano, I was talking to this guy from the Free Southern Theater, which was also an inspiration because they were black actors from New York City touring the south in 1964-65.

And I was talking to one of them, a guy by the name of Murray Levy, and he said,

You're going down there to start a theater company? And I said, Yeah, you know. With what? Do you have any money? I said, No. No funding? No. Do you have a board of directors? No. Do you have any actors? No. Do you have any scripts? No.

He says, How are you going to do it? And I said, I don't know. But I'm going to do it.

If you believe in something, it becomes true.

We're at the Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers theater from Delano, California. And we've come here this evening to tell you the story of our strike, our huelga, and of our union, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO led by Cesar Chavez.