striptease

Act 1: I dance to the song “Mentiras /Lies” and the audience sings along. Act 2: I take off some clothes and stay behind the grid for a while. Act 3: I walk “the way” while I throw the papers on the floor. Act 4: I take off the last dress, then we beat the hanging piñata together, which is filled with candies, mandarines and peanuts. There is a short selection of the texts (originally written in Spanish):

“Till when are they going to understand that they are not wanted in the USA? And in Mexico certainly not!”

“I left my country looking for a better life but I was faced with this…”

” With Andrea and Tere – the nannies who worked for the family for years – the girls spent their afternoons there. Both sisters were originally from a neighbouring village. A town on the coast of the Soconusco. There people speak a little bit different. They have a different pronunciation, they swallow the letter “s” at the end. That was something fun for the children, something they didn’t know from home, because the pronunciation pointed – among other things too – to the social classes.”

“A region that until then had been abandoned and forgotten by the rest of Mexico. After all, it was a region that didn’t matter to anyone. Although it’s a very important region in terms of its geographical location.”

“A region that until then had been abandoned and forgotten by the rest of Mexico. After all, it was a region that didn’t matter to anyone. However, it is a very important region in terms of its geographical location.”

” It seems that no one is interested in the lives of these women and girls. They’re not really Mexican, they’re ‘only’ indigenous. Neither now nor yesterday. They have never been of interest to anyone. They don’t even seem to exist, except to tourists, as a tourist attraction in the state.”

“No one was interested in the southern border, not even for reasons of national security. Until the early 1980s.”

“I’m a migrant and a sex worker.”

” In 2018 there were 3,752 deaths of women in Mexico due to intentional homicide, the highest recorded in 29 years, from 1990 to the present, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

“Since 2015, Mexico has stopped and deported more immigrants than Trump.”

“The ferocity comes from very far away, but since 1993, when the bodies of Alma Chavira Farel, 13, and Angelica Luna Villalobos, 16, were found in that border state, the shadows of infamy have spread like wildfire to all the corners of the national territory.

“What would it feel like to flee?”

“Get out of Mexico, all you migrants in the caravans. We don’t want them in Mexico. Law zero to migrants. AMLO* traidor.”

*AMLO- Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, current president of Mexico (218-2024)

Perneo

©maricruz peñaloza 2023. All rights reserved. Total or partial reproduction of the texts or photos is expressly prohibited. All rights belong to the artist, both the texts and the photographs.