Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

How much do you really know about your parents and grandparents?
Yes, you know them as parents and grandparents but their lives are bigger than those roles, and we often forget to ask questions about their childhood, their struggles, challenges and the important moments of their lives.

Actress/playwright Anna De Luna decided not to make that common mistake. She repeatedly interviewed her mother, Carmen  Villafuerte De Luna,, who was born in Villa Aldama, a small town in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where she spent the first eight years of her life in poverty before emigrating to the U.S. with her mother and younger sister. The result of those interviews and stories that Carmen shared with her daughter is De Luna’s new one-woman play, “Carmen from Mexico” which will premiere this weekend at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.   

She first presented a shorter version of the work at the Luminaria festival in 2018 and followed that up with a performance in 2019 at Jump-Start Theater. Her mother approved both of those, but the present play is substantially longer. “I am hoping she’ll like it,” said the playwright.

The play focuses on Carmen’s childhood, roughly from the age of 6 to 12. “I wanted to show a little girl’s perspective, about her life in Mexico, and what it was like to cross over to the U.S. and adapt to a different culture,” noted De Luna.

Once in the U.S., the little girl missed two years of schooling because her American stepfather never got around to getting the paperwork needed to enroll. (Carmen’s mother married a total of four husbands). When she was finally enrolled, she was exposed to mockery because she couldn’t speak English and was two years older than the other third graders. She was even tested for mental retardation. Even the Hispanic kids were making fun of her because her Spanish was not the same as the Spanish they spoke. In addition, the family continued to be poor and mother and children often made some money picking cotton in the fields.

 “But she was very resilient, and that’s one the things I wanted to show in this play,” said De Luna. “She was confronted with all these obstacles but she always found a way to fit in and make friends.” Eventually, the family moved to San Antonio where they lived crammed in with relatives on the West Side but for the kids “it was like a big party.”

Directed by experienced stage director Jorge Pina, “Carmen from Mexico” is a play with music and song, as well as moments of joy and levity. Carmen herself loved to sing and had a great voice, so songs from the time of her childhood are now sung by her actress daughter from the stage, accompanied by two musicians – guitarist Mike Ryan and accordionist Michael Galindo.

Asked if it is challenging to direct a show where one person portrays all the characters, Pina commented that it would be with a mediocre actor but “I am directing a very powerful actress; it’s easy to direct Anna.” He also sees his own story reflected in Carmen’s experiences. “That’s our story, that’s an American story,” he said.

 De Luna hopes to take the show on tour, and is already considering writing the sequel focusing on her mother’s later experiences. “Carmen from Mexico” is her fourth solo play. Her first, “Chicana Atheist” depicted her own rebellion against her family’s devotion to the Catholic Church.

For the record, Carmen went on the earn a degree in bilingual education from UTSA and have a successful teaching career. And, unlike her mother, was married to only one man for 50 years.

The playwright hopes that the people who see her play will be moved “to do something to record the stories of their own families.

“Talk to parents and grandparents before they are gone forever. Once they are gone, the stories are lost,” she said.
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“Carmen From Mexico”, Aug.13 & 14, 2021, 8 p.m.; $10 general admission; only 200 seats will be sold out of the 320 in the theater; Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, 1301 Guadalupe St., 78207; 210-271-3151; tickets at www.guadalupeculturalarts.org.