National in form, international in content

In 1969, different cultural and political events took place that aroused public interest and attention. Let’s remember the Cordobazo, the arrival of man on the moon, or the US bombing in Vietnam, among others. But there is an apparently minor fact, but one that had its continental relevance and an unprecedented local response. I referred to Nelson Rockefeller’s diplomatic visit to our country and the burning of 14 Minimax supermarkets. These supermarkets, owned by the Rockefeller family, were set on fire in the early morning of June 26, 1969, in repudiation of the Onganía military dictatorship and US policies for Latin America and Vietnam.

For many years now, with my group Los internacionales teatro ensamble, we have been searching for a national and Latin American epic: addressing themes and forms that connect with historical and political elements, and tracking signs, presents, continuities, ruptures or leaps that generate interest. and connect with an audience today, here and now. That is roughly the path that identifies my theatrical group, I would say playing with that Marxist phrase, we are going in search of a National theater in its form, international in its content.

The Minimaxes and the Talent Hunter is a comedy for actors, actresses and combustion elements. It is a comedy with a lot of humor and absurd situations, which takes historical elements to structure its story. Its synopsis would be like this: “A group of revolutionaries prepares the sabotage of Rockefeller’s supermarkets, and they storm a radio to read a statement. There they will meet a group of artists and their representative recording a radio drama tribute to Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds. It is at that precise moment that artists and revolutionaries will be surprised by abrupt climate change, a kind of deadly snowfall, as Germán Oesterheld proposes to us in El Eternauta”.

The idea of ​​the collective hero, almost like a thesis from where El Eternauta stands, I think it fits perfectly to think about those men and women who carried out the sabotage of the Minimax supermarket chain. And I say this since this sabotage was carried out under a terrible military dictatorship, during a dictatorship an event as extraordinary as it was unprecedented up to that moment in the country was carried out. I also think that we must think of another factor and perhaps the most important and distinctive of these facts and that is silence. “In silence it had to be” says José Martí.

And this conspiratorial act and not signed at the time by any political organization, was carried out in silence by a political organization, something that the entire popular camp and the militancy know. But leaving aside minor and domestic discussions (and the usual McCarthyism), a thin invisible red thread surely ties this story, will it be the thread that lights the fuse? Well, we are waiting for you at the Theater!

*Actor, director, playwright. Director of the international theater ensemble. Deputy Director of the Department of Art of the Cultural Center of Cooperation.