Fronteras Americanas by Guillermo Verdecchia
"Fronteras Americanas" is a theatrical piece by Guillermo Verdecchia that explores themes of identity, migration, and the complexities of cultural borders across the Americas. The narrative is delivered through the experiences of Verdecchia, a naturalized Canadian citizen originally from Argentina, and his exaggerated alter ego, Facundo "Wideload McKennah" Morales Segundo. The performance begins with Verdecchia expressing his sense of disorientation in North America despite being in Toronto, prompting reflections on national borders and personal identity.
Facundo enters dressed as a stereotypical Mexican bandit, using humor and cultural references to investigate perceptions of ethnicity. Throughout the piece, Verdecchia shares his personal journey, including his family's migration story, cultural misunderstandings, and moments of introspection tied to historical events. The dialogue oscillates between playful stereotypes and serious commentary on issues such as immigration, ethnic identity, and the shared experiences of those living on the continent. Ultimately, "Fronteras Americanas" invites the audience to reconsider the rigid boundaries that divide cultures and encourages a collective understanding of living on the metaphorical border.
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Subject Terms
Fronteras Americanas by Guillermo Verdecchia
- Born: December 7, 1962
- Birthplace: Buenos Aires, Argentina
First published: 1993
Type of work: Drama
Type of plot: Autobiographical
Time of plot: 1960s to early 1990s
Locale: Toronto, Canada; Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina
Principal Characters
Guillermo Verdecchia, a naturalized Canadian citizen born in Argentina
Facundo "Wideload McKennah" Morales Segundo, his exaggerated alter ego
The Story
Guillermo Verdecchia opens by welcoming everybody to the continent of America. He admits that he is lost on this big continent that encompasses both North and South America, according to the classic geographical definition. He states that although he knows he is in Toronto, Canada, he still feels lost. He reflects on the nature of national borders. He says he has hired an interpreter, or interlocutor, to help the audience understand more about borders. He exits.
Accompanied by mariachi music and a warning that gunshots will be fired, Facundo "Wideload McKennah" Morales Segundo enters. He is dressed as a stereotypical Mexican bandit, with a poncho, a sombrero, gun bandoliers, and a pistol. In heavily accented English interspersed with bits of untranslated Spanish, Facundo tells the audience that they are in Mexico now. He describes himself as the stereotypical bandit from popular culture and fires his pistol. Then he removes his outfit and says it is an old Halloween costume.
Facundo explains that in the United States, he adopted the English name Wideload McKennah because English speakers mispronounced his first name, making it sound like an obscenity. He reflects on the appropriate definition of his ethnicity, as he was born in neither the United States nor Mexico, but in another American country. Is he Chicano, Hispanic, or Latino?
Verdecchia returns. As Verdecchia and Facundo are played by the same actor, each character performs alone on the stage. Verdecchia explains that he became lost when he emigrated with his parents from Argentina to Canada as a little boy. He gives a guided tour of his version of the history of the American continent, beginning two hundred million years ago and ending in 1969. It was the year of the Woodstock festival in the United States and Verdecchia’s first day of school in Canada. As his teacher cannot pronounce his first name, Guillermo, very well, he suggests she call him Willy.
Wideload talks of his stay with a European American family when he first came to North America. Verdecchia tells of finally visiting Argentina again in his twenties. He traveled via Santiago, Chile, once the military junta there was removed. In Santiago, he witnessed a man being shot outside his hotel room. Wideload reflects on romantic relationships between European Americans and Latinos. He talks about the image of the male Latin lover in American popular culture.
Verdecchia speaks of his travel sickness. Even in Argentina, where he stayed at his grandmother’s apartment, he had to vomit on his last afternoon there. The symptoms appeared to be psychosomatic, as a physician could find nothing physically wrong with him. Wideload reflects on the cultural role of the theater and wishes the audience an enjoyable intermission.
After the intermission, Wideload reappears. He warns the audience about the dangers of feeding a ferret with an avocado. He then explains that he only plays a stereotype so the audience can laugh with him, not at him, and take him seriously.
Verdecchia tells of the difficulties he has at immigration when visiting Los Angeles. He feels some borders are more difficult to cross than others, and different people have different difficulties crossing borders. He talks lovingly about the tango crossing borders.
Wideload reflects on the hypocritical elements of North America’s war on drugs. Verdecchia reenacts his audition for the part of a small-time Latino criminal, Sharko, for a television movie. He wears dark makeup. Verdecchia slips on a hairnet and plays Sharko’s scene from the movie. He tells the audience to imagine a black Camaro and Sharko selling an assault rifle with silencer and bullets to a customer. Sharko wants to sell him a handgun, too, but it turns out the man already has a government-issued handgun, as he is an undercover agent. Verdecchia removes his makeup and leaves his Sharko role.
Verdecchia says that when he returned from Argentina to Santiago, he found out that the man shot dead outside the hotel was a bank robber. Because of his ongoing travel sickness, once he was back in Toronto, Verdecchia visited El Brujo, a faith healer. El Brujo told Verdecchia that he was suffering from a border wound. While getting drunk with Verdecchia, El Brujo told of his false collective memories. They come from the Latino experience and include the death of Simon Bolivar and the Canadian Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. El Brujo burned Verdecchia’s left shoe in the bathtub. Verdecchia tells of his own memories. These mix fake collective memories with real, personal childhood and adolescent memories tied to his immigrant experience.
Verdecchia remembers how big and clean the airport seemed upon his return from Argentina. He feels that he is neither in Canada nor in Argentina but on the border. This is his home. He calls himself the Pan-American Highway.
Wideload enters and exhorts the audience to think about ethnic stereotyping in advertising and the impact of globalization. The border between European Americans and Latinos will exist everywhere on the continent now.
Suddenly, the actor playing Wideload and Verdecchia rapidly switches roles twice without leaving the stage for each character change. Both characters admonish the audience to consider all the people living on the large continent of America as living together on one border.
Verdecchia enters alone and says that he is learning to live on the border. He has called off the border patrol and asks the audience to do the same. He invites the audience to go with him toward the border. Wideload enters and invites everybody to dance.
Bibliography
Gómez, Mayte. "Healing the Border Wound: Fronteras Americanas and the Future of Canadian Multiculturalism." Theatre Research in Canada. 16.1/2 (1995): 26–39. Print.
Simon, Sherry. "Border Writing." Rev. of Benedetta in Guysterland, by Giose Rimanelli, and Fronteras Americanas, by Guillermo Verdecchia. Canadian Literature 142/143 (1994): 213–14. Print.
Tilley, Elspeth. "Staging a ‘Plurality of Vision.’: Diasporic Performance in Polycharacter Monodrama." Modern Drama 55.3 (2012): 304–28. Print.
Zorc-Maver, Darja, and Igor Maver. "Guillermo Verdecchia and the Frontera in Contemporary Canadian Diasporic Writing." Acta Literaria 43 (2011): 119–27. Print.