MAQUILADORAS
Maquiladoras are U.S. owned manufacturing plants located in Mexico. This is so that they can hire Mexican workers for a lower wage and capitalize on doing business in the U.S.A., increasing their profits. Maquiladoras are thought to have started in Juarez due to its proximity to the United States as a border city in relation to El Paso, Texas.
Sixty-two percent of all salaried positions that are held by members of the border town’s workforce are connected to the maquiladoras.
–The Tecma Group of Companies
FEMICIDES
Femicides are defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the gender-based murder of a woman or girl by a man.” The Femicides of Mexico have been documented to have taken the lives of thousands of women from 1993 on. In the first four months of January 2020 alone, nearly 1,000 women were taken and killed at the hands of Femicides according to CNN.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez gained national and international attention, with hundreds of women reported missing or found dead. The inaction of the Mexican government in those cases drew ire from observers both in Mexico and outside of the country, but the issue of femicide in Mexico was far from just a local issue. Approximately 10 women are killed every day in Mexico, and the rate of femicide has doubled in the last 5 years.
–Center for Strategic and International Studies
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PROTESTS, ACTIVISM, & CORRUPTION
A top official in Mexico vowed last year to make the issue of violence against women “a priority for the government.” But many women feel Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has brushed off the crisis. In reference to the 26,171 people who called the country’s emergency call center in March about violent incidences against women, López Obrador said: “Ninety percent of those calls that you’re referring to are fake.”
-Elle Magazine
If we don’t raise our voices, when will they hear us?
-The Washington Post
WHY THIS PLAY NOW?
La Ruta tells the story of Mexican women whose voices continue to be silenced. With the rate of femicides only increasing since first documented in the 1990s, and with hundreds of women still missing and unaccounted for, when will action be taken? La Ruta exposes the atrocities happening right over the border, with the U.S. taking part but not taking action. With so little representation of Latinas on stage, it is important for their stories to be told, and this play is through a Latina lens, with an entirely Latina cast of characters. The music in the play also offers exposure to Mexican folk songs, sharing with audiences art from another culture that deserves more representation. And, lastly, with our production taking place in Allentown, is more important than ever to have representation of the communities around us be featured on stage, and Allentown is a majority hispanic population.
The Values of the Play…
- Untold and overshadowed stories of Latina Women
- The fight against a corrupt government
- The relentless fight for women to find their loved ones
- The importance and strength of the bond between women
- The importance of maintaining hope when all seems lost
- The helplessness of women in a society stacked against them
Ultimately, this play opens audiences into a plane of existence they are likely unfamiliar with and allows the audience to feel the frustration, helplessness, desperation, and persistence of the women fighting to keep themselves and their loved ones safe in a sexist society that offers them no protection.
STYLE & IN THE ROUND
La Ruta is realism presented in a non-chronological/linear order, where scenes bounce between time and space. The world is realistic, with musical interjections interspersed throughout the play that take the audience out of reality. This production will be set in the round, which will immerse audiences fully in the world of the play- you will feel like you are part of the story, adding to the feeling of inability to escape this world, as the characters in the play and the women experiencing this in real life feel.
MEXICAN FOLK MUSIC
PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS
La Ruta was developed at Primary Stages, Steppenwolf Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, and Pivot Arts. The fully staged World Premiere was at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, and since then, there have been a few other regional and educational productions.
Gomez has crafted an act of storytelling whose primary function is as noble as any act of pure human inspiration one can find in the theater: keeping these women and their daughters alive.
-New City stage
Gomez demonstrates with ample skill how the trajectory of a play should go in LA RUTA: devastation lurks in the corners of the narrative from the start, but the show itself starts on a more light-hearted note filled with warmth and friendship.
-Broadway World
