ICE Raid of MacArthur Park Is as Absurd as a Beckett Play
OPINION
by Daniel A. Olivas
by Daniel A. Olivas
In my play, Waiting for Godínez, two Mexican friends, Jesús and Isabel, wait patiently in an unnamed city park for a mysterious man named Godínez. They can’t quite remember why they’re waiting for him, but they know he’s important for some reason. Their wait is interrupted each night when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents kidnap Jesús and throw him into a cage with plans to deport him along with the many other adults and children they’ve rounded up. Each morning, Isabel asks her dear old friend what happened to him during the night, Jesús explains—yet again—his nocturnal plight.
“The agents came, in green uniforms, grabbed me with their big hands, and threw me in that black van with all the others. I can still hear their cries, especially los niños! And then, after driving through the night, those agents threw us all into those pinches cages, but they forgot to lock mine, so I escaped, and I left all the others behind, locked in their cages, snoring. I walked all night. And now I am here."
Though my play will be published this September in book form by the University of New Mexico Press, I wrote Waiting for Godínez in the summer of 2019 in order to go beyond fiction and poetry to rage against the MAGA anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies of the first Trump administration. I believed that by embodying my words in actors, I could more fully humanize the plight of undocumented immigrants and the harm caused to them by brutal anti-immigrant policies. I turned to Samuel Beckett’s iconic absurdist play, Waiting for Godot, as inspiration for my own playwriting to highlight the absurdity of policies that demonize the very people who keep this country’s economy and social fabric vibrant.
My play resonated with theaters and audiences on both coasts. Three Los Angeles theaters—Playwrights Arena, The Road Theatre, and the Garry Marshall Theatre—produced it in streamed readings in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In 2023, the New York-based Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional, one of the oldest Latinx theaters in the United States, selected Waiting for Godínez for a hybrid in-person, streamed reading. And last year, the venerable Teatro Espejo in Sacramento, California, produced a fully staged production in a world premiere.
My actors across all four productions brilliantly brought to life the heartbreaking monotony of being both hunted and needed by a society that wants to have its crops picked, lawns cut, clothing sewn, restaurant food cooked and served, and homes and offices cleaned, while keeping their 1950s nostalgic—but false—image of a monochromatic America alive.
I set my play in a city park that was modeled after Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, a place where my parents took me and my four siblings on many occasions back in the 1960s and ‘70s. I chose such a setting as a counterpoint to the desolate outdoors Samuel Beckett chose for Waiting for Godot. I believed that the beauty and peace of a city park would heighten the horror of Jesús’s dreadful nightly apprehensions by ICE agents.
And then on July 7, my play became reality when ICE and other federal agents, including federalized National Guard troops, marched into MacArthur Park, which was mostly empty except for children who attended a summer camp. Many agents were armed, supported by military vehicles as well as a helicopter overhead. The troops—there’s no other word for them—wore military fatigues, had their faces covered with masks, and heads “protected” by helmets as they marched in lines across the park. And yes, like a scene from Planet of the Apes, some were on horseback.
Mayor Karen Bass put it perfectly when she decried the operation in a press conference later that same day: “What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.” The Mayor added that “[i]t’s the way a city looks before a coup.”
And as I watched the news film of the MacArthur Park immigration raid, I couldn’t argue with the Mayor’s assessment, though to me, I might have used the words “dystopian” and “martial law” to describe ICE’s operation in a place that should be safe for everyone, especially children.
But this is exactly where immigrants—and anyone who “looks” like an immigrant—are now: they are both needed but despised by a country that hires them one day, but threatens deportation the next. In my play, Isabel looks upon her exhausted friend and laments: “What harm have you done to them? You are as much of this country as you are of México. But you are not home in either place. Ni de aquí, ni de allá.”
Sadly, I sometimes feel hopeless as we live in an endless Beckettian loop of brutality and xenophobia. But in the end, I refuse to surrender to this absurdity in the same way that Beckett’s Estragon did with his lament that there is nothing to be done. There is certainly something to be done if we are to disrupt this militaristic cruelty.
For too many under our current political regime, home isn’t home anymore. And absurdity will reign unless elected officials from both major political parties can come together and say: Enough is enough.
My play resonated with theaters and audiences on both coasts. Three Los Angeles theaters—Playwrights Arena, The Road Theatre, and the Garry Marshall Theatre—produced it in streamed readings in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In 2023, the New York-based Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional, one of the oldest Latinx theaters in the United States, selected Waiting for Godínez for a hybrid in-person, streamed reading. And last year, the venerable Teatro Espejo in Sacramento, California, produced a fully staged production in a world premiere.
My actors across all four productions brilliantly brought to life the heartbreaking monotony of being both hunted and needed by a society that wants to have its crops picked, lawns cut, clothing sewn, restaurant food cooked and served, and homes and offices cleaned, while keeping their 1950s nostalgic—but false—image of a monochromatic America alive.
I set my play in a city park that was modeled after Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, a place where my parents took me and my four siblings on many occasions back in the 1960s and ‘70s. I chose such a setting as a counterpoint to the desolate outdoors Samuel Beckett chose for Waiting for Godot. I believed that the beauty and peace of a city park would heighten the horror of Jesús’s dreadful nightly apprehensions by ICE agents.
And then on July 7, my play became reality when ICE and other federal agents, including federalized National Guard troops, marched into MacArthur Park, which was mostly empty except for children who attended a summer camp. Many agents were armed, supported by military vehicles as well as a helicopter overhead. The troops—there’s no other word for them—wore military fatigues, had their faces covered with masks, and heads “protected” by helmets as they marched in lines across the park. And yes, like a scene from Planet of the Apes, some were on horseback.
Mayor Karen Bass put it perfectly when she decried the operation in a press conference later that same day: “What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.” The Mayor added that “[i]t’s the way a city looks before a coup.”
And as I watched the news film of the MacArthur Park immigration raid, I couldn’t argue with the Mayor’s assessment, though to me, I might have used the words “dystopian” and “martial law” to describe ICE’s operation in a place that should be safe for everyone, especially children.
But this is exactly where immigrants—and anyone who “looks” like an immigrant—are now: they are both needed but despised by a country that hires them one day, but threatens deportation the next. In my play, Isabel looks upon her exhausted friend and laments: “What harm have you done to them? You are as much of this country as you are of México. But you are not home in either place. Ni de aquí, ni de allá.”
Sadly, I sometimes feel hopeless as we live in an endless Beckettian loop of brutality and xenophobia. But in the end, I refuse to surrender to this absurdity in the same way that Beckett’s Estragon did with his lament that there is nothing to be done. There is certainly something to be done if we are to disrupt this militaristic cruelty.
For too many under our current political regime, home isn’t home anymore. And absurdity will reign unless elected officials from both major political parties can come together and say: Enough is enough.
Comment Box is loading comments...
|
|
