- [Marc] We did a survey in November,
along with coming to a bunch of community meetings
to really find out what was on the minds
of residents of Barrio Anita.
(light music)
And the thing that came out highest
was to get to know each other more,
like neighbors wanted to get to know each other better.
It was this dance with the community
and we had to get to know each other,
artists and community residents.
- It's one of the oldest neighborhoods
and it's overlooked in a way.
So, it felt necessary to tell a story.
- When you interview all the people from back in the day,
talking about what the barrio was like sort of at its peak,
from the '30s through the maybe early '70s,
what everybody says was everybody knew everybody
and there was all this intermarriage
and people would get married and build an addition
or another house on the property
and there was just so much safety and sense of belonging
and sense of being really tied to this land.
And that's gone.
People don't know each other like that.
And, so, to try to create something
that would give folks an excuse to come out
and to get to know each other was one of the
big goals of this project.
- [Interviewer] Where did the Barrio Stories series
idea come from, is that something
that you'd had for a while or?
- It's people like you that come over here
and ruin everything that we have settled.
- That's what you're-- - I'm a Mexican
and very, very proud of it.
- [Milta] We were in graduate school
and we saw Precious Knowledge.
I just couldn't believe that this was happening
and at that time it was 2012.
- [Marc] And we watched it and we cried
and we were like, we have to do something.
- My grandpa and my grandma taught me
to be proud that I'm Mexican and these classes help me
because I actually know my history now.
- For someone that's felt so out of place,
it feels good to have a home.
- The way things were going, I really just,
would've just left school.
This space saved me in a way.
(clapping)
- Marc had the brilliant idea to
write a play about the banning of Mexican-American studies,
a docu-drama play.
- This is all America, right?
- [Marc] There was heart at the core of this program.
- People who live here in North America tend to call--
- Not just educating but giving
young Latinos pride and non-Latinos
that were interested in this culture
that we're all so immersed in.
And to take that away simply for political reasons,
you know, to get votes, to fearmonger.
(shouting)
- [Crowd] Fight back! (shouting)
- [Marc] Oh, racism, man, you know, racism.
I've experienced it growing up,
my mother certainly and grandparents in many deep
and horrible ways.
And to me, that's what I saw was behind it.
And as an artist, this is happening.
I just needed to come here and do that work.
- It was the one thing that we could do to help,
as artists, right?
It's like the thing that we could do to spread the word.
- So we came out just, really, initially, to do this play.
And I think there's a part of me that is still saying
I'm gonna put this Mexican-American history out there
in spite of the state who has now been found guilty
of being totally racist by banning these classes.
(somber music)
- [Milta] And that was the whole idea behind
the Body of Stories project.
It was about honoring, preserving
Tucson's Mexican-American heritage.
- [Marc] We tried to find as many ways to incorporate
the neighborhood, to include neighborhood residents
in the making of it, not just extracting stories from them.
In the course of interviewing all these folks,
we kept hearing about these backyard celebrations
and this is what people did before internet
and probably really before TV took hold.
And they would talk about eating outside
and cooking and all this food
and there was live music, musicians,
and there was dancing and it would go to the wee hours.
And many people talked about this
with big smiles on their faces.
And so I was like, okay, well, let's try to recreate
one of these backyard parties.
We took all the videos when anybody
mentioned a backyard party, all the oral history interviews.
We put all those clips together
and we projected them onto the tool shed there.
- So a lot of them were from in the,
they married within the (mumbles).
- [Marc] So as you walk in,
you start to hear from the actual people,
what these parties were like
and then you keep going deeper in
and get to experience a recreation of one
and then you get to hear the elders
sing those old (speaking foreign language).
(singing in foreign language) (guitar strumming)
And then switch to a young person doing a poem,
spoken word piece about the Barrio.
- Here in Barrio Anita. - And what it means to them
as young people.
- Then how do I teach your ninos to reach the Promised Land?
You teach them that they are already here.
And as they sit with the (speaking foreign language),
they notice the butter yawn and open its eyes
and it gives the same buenos dias
that it's given to our esquela and our abuela for years.
- [Marc] And then the final element was the people,
the audience just talking and enjoying themselves.
(audience clapping and cheering)
The other big area of focus was with the four giant screens
in the vacant lot.
- So she was into those things that we take for granted.
- [Marc] That was just straight oral history, you know?
Just wanting to collect those stories
and then once we had them, how best to present them.
(dramatic music)
And you could gravitate to a certain screen
and really focus in on these stories.
- [Child] Some of the children that didn't get killed
were sold as slaves in Mexico
or given to rich families in Tucson to work as servants.
- [Marc] The mariachi stage was in honor of Davis Mariachi,
which was the very first
after school mariachi program in Tucson in 1983.
That program gave birth to all the other ones.
(singing in foreign language) (upbeat music)
- [Milta] I was literally running around from place to place
making sure everything was where it was supposed to be.
And even through my going back and forth really fast,
I noticed beautiful things here and there,
like the video playing over the house.
- Almost as if they had all come together
to pose for this big photo.
(gentle music)
- I love seeing the pride.
It really does create a cool vibe, right?
Like that sense of ownership, like this is our place,
let's take care of it, let's be friends.
Let's talk to each other.
Let's populate our underutilized space
which is our neighborhood.
If we're proud of where we come from,
then we're better humans to each other, right?
So at the end of the day, it helps
for everybody to know their roots
and to understand that they have history,
that they have things to be proud of.
- We're trying to create the most beautiful,
the most aesthetically pleasing, the most professional,
high production values as possible.
But we're working in tandem with community.
I can't just be an artist for art's sake.
There needs to be a real community building component
to all of this, otherwise it's not for me.
- Have kept us firm and six feet above
and said let's jump, let's dance,
- [All] And never let go of this home!
(audience cheering and clapping)