Submitted by: Suzanne Oboler, Professor, Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Click here to read online: “Detained in the Desert”: A Play by Josefina Lopez, 2011
“This text is very timely. It covers racial profiling of Latinxs due to Arizona’s “papers please” law (SB 1070); migrant deaths; the criminalization of humanitarian aid; hate speech and right-wing talk shows (there is a character based on Lou Dobbs); anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx violence; religious redemption; self-transformation; ghosts.” (Comment by Oboler, 2019)
“Detained in the desert” is a satirical look at the anti-immigrant laws that brings together two completely different people on opposite ends of the immigration debate through a karmic debt that must be paid. Detained in the Desert received its world premiere in Los Angeles, California, at CASA 0101 (October 1-November 21, 2010), located in the heart of Boyle Heights, where Josefina Lopez herself grew up. The play’s story pivots around two people detained in the desert, how they got there, and the impact the experience has on their thinking about immigration and the role they both occupy within the specific political landscape of Arizona. Significantly, Lopez wrote this play during a time of national conflict so as to prevent herself from falling into a state of despair and to lend her voice to the struggle of those in Arizona working against the rhetoric of hate that has come to permeate the cultural landscape, from the legislature to the media. To write this play, Lopez conducted research that included following the evolution of SB 1070, listening to talk radio, and studying performed struggles at the U. S. Arizona-Mexico border between humanitarian activists and vigilante Minutemen types, the latter known to aggressively follow and sabotage the efforts of groups such as Border Angels by targeting for shooting practice the containers of water they leave throughout the desert for desperate crossers.
The play was found in Chicana/Latina Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 128-195 (68 pages). The play is from the book Detained in the Desert and Other Plays, WPR Publishing, 2011. Copyrighted, but available through the library using John Jay login.
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