El dueño de las mariposas [videorecording] = Owner of the butterflies

Summary: FOMMA - Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya - is a collective of Mayan women who use theater as a tool for education and community building. Based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, they are performers, playwrights, and teachers who tour their work in their communities and internationally, performing plays that focus on women's and indigenous rights, literacy, cultural survival, ecology, health, and education in the Tzeltal and Tzotzil indigenous languages. 'El Dueño de las Mariposas' (‘Owner of the Butterflies’) tells the story of Chepe, an orphan predestined by his 'wayjel' - the hummingbird - to change the fate of the slaves suffering under the despotic regime of coffee plantation landowner Don Martín Contreras. The play exposes the despicable living and working conditions of the coffee workers, denouncing the violation of their human rights and demanding that the fundamental rights of these individuals be upheld. This piece is the result ofa process of collective creation on the relationship between politics and the body; the resulting performance brings together symbols, characters and circumstances from the rich Mayan imaginary as well as from the everyday life conditions of indigenous peoples in Latin America, in intricate labyrinths of time, love, injustice, and freedom, an urgent call for inalienable human rights.

Credits: María Francisca Oseguera Cruz, Victoria Patishtan Gómez, performers.