Annotations for Subject: Representation

I'm Maria Martin. For more than 35 years now, the theater company El Teatro Campesino has brought the Chicano and Latino experience to the American stage.

At that time, I was aware that the problem with trying to be a Chicano playwright in America was that there was no such thing as Hispanic theater in America.

There was community Hispanic theater, but professional Hispanic theater in America was almost nonexistent.

So I saw it as a challenge, you know. Here's a challenge to try to fill this gap, this hole, this enormous vacuity.

The Teatro was a way to change our country, the country that we lived in, to make some room for us, give us some opportunities in education, in politics, in the commercial world, you know, in the corporate, whatever.

For one reason or another, it didn't happen, has not happened yet. There isn't a single regional-level style theater that relates to Latinos in the state of California.

So that proved that, oh, Latinos can finally sustain commercial theater. The problem is that there has not been another one since then.

Before I got that phone call, I could not work in this community because there was nothing for me to do. I've been entertaining people since 1961. Here it is, 1978. I had not gained one penny from the American theater. The first paycheck I ever got was from Zoot Suit when I made 250 bucks a week for acting on stage.

Words never seen printed in my life. Words that I had heard all my life. Words that only could come from the heart and the passion and the understanding of the finest who command the language.

It was a time which saw what some call the Latinization of the United States. Everyone, from Linda Ronstadt to George Bush, it seemed, discovered their Hispanic connection.

At last, the American cultural climate seemed to have caught up with the work of El Teatro Campesino.

In Hollywood, they call it the Hispanic market. We know it to be simply the presence of millions and millions and millions of people that are attuned to the new realities of the Southwest.

They forced the scholars to recognize that there is more than Western European theater. And as long as the companies that have been spawned by the Teatro Campesino and the playwrights that have been inspired by the Teatro Campesino continue to write and express their reality concerning their own communities, then the impact will continue to be felt.

There are certainly playwrights out there who have, from the Chicano community, who have not necessarily been influenced by Luis Valdez per se. But without Luis Valdez having opened the doors in many of these institutions, then they would not even be listened to. They wouldn't be heard from.

For this year's Academy Awards, actor Benicio Del Toro has been nominated as best supporting actor. If he wins, Del Toro would become only the second Latino to win an Oscar in one of the major categories. The only other time that happened was in 1961.

She became a pioneer for both women and people of color when she won an Academy Award for West Side Story. The first and only Latina to ever win that award.

And certainly that moment for me became an incredible moment in recognition. In that someone who had my name existed in this country which of course I previously felt that no one did exist in this country with that name.

My goodness that movie did more things for more Latinos than you can possibly imagine.