Living Arts of Tulsa Podcast

Panel Discussion With Jose Torres Tama and Rodrigo Dorfman, The Directors Of "This Taco Truck Kills Fascists" And Miguel J. Crespo, The Director of "Utopía de la Mariposa."

November 24, 2020 Tulsa Podcast Lab
Living Arts of Tulsa Podcast
Panel Discussion With Jose Torres Tama and Rodrigo Dorfman, The Directors Of "This Taco Truck Kills Fascists" And Miguel J. Crespo, The Director of "Utopía de la Mariposa."
Show Notes
Jessica Dewey sat down with the directors of two documentaries shared for virtual programming as part of our Día de los Muertos Arts Festival.   

Jose Torres Tama and Rodrigo Dorfman are the directors of "This Taco Truck Kills Fascists" and Miguel J. Crespo is the director of "Utopía de la Mariposa." "This Taco Truck Kills Fascists"

"This Taco Truck Kills Fascists"

This Taco Truck Kills Fascists weaves two narratives: the classic “against all odds” story of an immigrant artist of color bringing the voices of radical Black performers and undocumented workers out of the shadows and the story of a father struggling to raise his two boys into political consciousness in the Age of Trump.  Seen through the eyes Diego (7) and Darius (10) who become members of their father's radical performance ensemble, This Taco Truck Kills Fascists invites the audience to navigate with them the line between innocence and knowledge, anger and love, agency and apathy; a challenge we all must face in order to heal our nation’s open wounds. This epic coming of age journey is born out of the urgency of the now and our responsibility to engage and confront white supremacy with the weaponized beauty of Art.


"Utopía de la Mariposa" 

Mexico is an indolent country. This is territory so violent that it has normalized the murders, disappearances, human rights violations, femicides, and other crimes that, due to corruption or omission of the authorities, almost always go unpunished. Lukas Avendaño is the most important and recognized artist in the muxe community. He was born in the Istmo of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. At the age of seven, he used to tantrum so his father wouldn't take him to the country to work. He wanted to do other things like study, dance, feel, and fly like a butterfly.  His strength on stage, the transgressive and anarchic of his speech, using his body as a performatic tool, has taken him to countries in Europe and Latin America. Even with all the virtuous and brilliant Lukas is, he has not been exempt from suffering a forced disappearance. On May 10, 2018, his brother Bruno Alonso Avendaño disappeared. Bruno was an active element of the Navy when his disappearance occurred. The response of the Secretary of the Navy was: "the element causes leave for absent three consecutive days to their work".  How can you introduce yourself to work when you are missing? How do you demand and force an institution like the Secretary of the Navy that your duty was to look for Bruno? How do you move that bureaucratic and incapable elephant that is the Mexican judicial system? Lukas has used his body and the performing and digital theater scene to present his missing brother and in turn denounce the total absence of citizen guarantees of the right to life by the State. Lukas' search has not stopped a single day. "To think that we will find it is an utopia, because those other 40 thousand disappeared deny you," says Lukas. For him, Bruno is an offering, an emancipation that squeezes an open sore that we all want to stop: the missing in Mexico.