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Early Life
Luis Miguel Valdez was born to migrant farmworkers Francisco & Armeda in Delano, California. He is the 2nd oldest of 10 children in his family. -
Early Life
Valdez and his family would constantly move to follow seasonal farm work in order for his parents to maintain their family. This meant that Valdez and his siblings went to many different schools -
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Interest In Theater
Luis Valdez’s interest in theater began in grade school. He would help organize plays and hosted puppet shows in his home garage in his spare time at home. He was part of the drama department at James Lick High School and performed in many productions. Upon graduation, he earned a scholarship to San Jose State University and studied English. -
His First Play
Valdez's first play was "The Theft" which was a one act play. This also won a playwrighting competition at his college. -
First Full-lengthed Play
The drama department at San Jose State University produced his first full-length play, The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa. This was written to bring political awareness that had begun to affect every minority group. This is agitprop theater that flirts with magic realism, a satirical, sometimes vicious comedy of identity at its finest and funniest. This helped provide the experience Valdez needed to launch his most famous theater project, El Teatro Campesino, the farmworker's theater. -
The San Francisco Mime Troupe
In 1964, he joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He would constantly tell stories and write plays. Within this era, he developed agitprop theater techniques, in which a performance presents political viewpoint and attempts to convince the audience to be for and act on those viewpoints. Valdez joined activist Cesar Chavez in 1965 and sought to raise funds for the grape boycott and farmworkers strike that Chavez had organized, and bring attention to the plight of migrant farmworkers. -
El Teatro Campesino
Luis Valdez founded and started El Teatro Campesino, it is an agricultural worker theater in California in 1965. He helped unite farmworkers during the Delano strike by farmworkers. This project inspired young Mexican American activists around the country to use the stage to speak out about their country's history, myths, and current political problems. -
Inspiration for Teatro Campesino
El Teatro Campesino was inspired by Valdez’s experience with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Valdez wanted to create a uniquely Chicano theater tradition. He met fellow Chicano Agustín Lira with his theater background and experiences and wanted to create a cultural wing of the United Farm Workers labor union. Originally, they produced plays to entertain strikers, but they rapidly became a tool to organize labor and promote the cultural awareness of the Chicano people. -
Luis & El Teatro Campesino start Theatre
Abandoning their vineyards and lettuce fields, Luis Valdez & el Teatro Campesino build a theater for the Mexican American people. Teatro chicano, an agitprop theater that combined classic theatrical traditions with Mexican humor, character types, history, and popular culture, grew out of the movement. -
More of his Work
The play that re-exams the “Sleepy Lagoon Trial of 1942” and the “Zoot Suit Riots of 1943”, two of the darkest moments in LA urban history Zoot Suit considered a masterpiece of the American Theater as well as the first Chicano play on Broadway and the first Chicano major feature film. -
Los Vendidos
One of the last actos that Valdez wrote for El Teatro Campesino. The story shows Honest Sancho, who owns a store that sells robots models of Mexican and Mexican-American robots that were played by live actors. Miss Jiménez is a secretary for Gov. Ronald Reagan and is looking to purchase a model that can appeal to low-income Latino people. Valdez intentionally plays up the stereotypes to show the absurd, yet very real views of the Chicano community by non-Chicano people. -
His involvement in the Chicano Society left an indelible mark that remains embodied in all his work even after he left the UFW
His early actos Las Dos Caras del Patroncito and Quinta Temporada were short plays written to encourage campesinos to leave the fields and join the UFW. Bernabe and La Carpa de los Rasquachis gave Chicanos their own contemporary mythology, his examinations of Chicano urban life in I Don’t Have To Show You No Stinkin’ Badges, viewing of classic Mexican folktales Corridos, his exploration of his Indigenous Yaqui roots in Mummified Deer all reflect on how he thinks about chicano society. -
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Other Projects
Valdez established a Chicano cultural center in Del Rey, California. Later on, he moved both theater and cultural center to Fresno, where they remained for two years. During this time, he made the short film I Am Joaquin based on the legendary poem by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzáles. While in Fresno, Valdez taught at Fresno State University and created TENAZ, the national Chicano theater organization, which was composed of many with theatre groups throughout the Southwest.. -
Marriage
Luis Valdez marries Lupe Trujillo-Valdez -
Pensamiento Serpetino
In 1973, he published his poem Pensamiento Serpentino, which drew on Mayan and Aztec philosophical concepts and argued that Indigenous ways of knowing were essential to the spiritual and material liberation of Chicana/os. The poem was later used in the highly successful Mexican American Studies Department Programs at Tucson Unified School District -
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Filmography
Coco (2017) actor
Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice (2000)narrator
Ballad of a Soldier (2000)actor.
The Cisco Kid (1994) writer and director. Small role too
La Pastorela (1991 Great Performances), writer and director
Los mineros (1991), narrator.
Fort Figueroa (1988), director.
Corridos:Tales of Passion & Revolution (1987), writer and director.
Which Way Is Up? (1977), actor.
El corrido:Ballad of a Farmworker (1976), writer, director, and actor.
Fighting for Our Lives (1975), writer. -
The Zoot Suit
Valdez broke into public theater in 1978 after his popular play Zoot Suit. This was one of the first Chicano plays to be performed on Broadway. It is a mix of fiction and history. The play is based on the Sleepy Lagoon Murder trials. Over a dozen Mexican-American people were arrested despite a lack of evidence or connection to the crime. It explores the discrimination of zoot suit-wearing Chicano men and the social injustices inflicted upon the Mexican-American community. -
Children
Luis and Guadalupe had 3 children named Anahuac, Kinan, & Lakin -
Breakthrough Play
The film that brought Valdez his "breakthrough into mainstream America" was La Bamba which debuted in 1987.This film tells the story of the Chicano rock-and-roll star Ritchie Valens. The film stars Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, and Joe Pantoliano, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Drama. -
Preparing People
Valdez and officials from the Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences formed the Latino Writers Group to improve opportunities and pay for Latino writers in Hollywood. He is also a founding faculty member and director of the CSU, Monterey Bay Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department. He is credited with assisting in the development of a university program that prepares students in the entertainment industry: filmmaking, writing, sound, cinematography. -
Awards
Golden Globe Award nominations Zoot Suit (Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy) and La Bamba (Best Motion Picture – Drama
Cartagena Film Festival, Best Picture Award, Zoot Suit, 1982
Peabody Award for excellence in television in 1987, Corridos: Tales of Passion and Revolution for PBS
California Governor's Award, March 1990
Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, 1992
Mexico's Aguila Azteca Award, 1994
2007 USA (United States Artists) Rockefeller Fellow
The National Medal of Arts (2015) -
Most Recent Play
His recent play Valley of the Heart, debuted October 30, 2018, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. In the play, two immigrant families one of Mexican heritage, the other of Japanese are living side by side on a Northern California farm at the start of World War II. Their lives become hectic not just through marriage but through the experience of new Americans forced to overcome painful obstacles and setbacks in their adopted country. -
Quote
"People would call us "dirty Mexicans." I remember going to a movie in Reedley where we weren't allowed to sit in the Anglo section. We were told by the ushers to sit with the rest of the Mexicans, because this section was reserved for whites. Those are things you never forget." The stereotype of Mexican-American people pinned them as farmworkers and manual laborers. The racially charged adjective “dirty” refers to this stereotype. -
Sources
"Contemporary Hispanic Biography" Encyclopedia.Com.18 Oct. 2023 .” Encyclopedia.Com, Encyclopedia.com, www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians-miscellaneous-biographies/luis-valdez.
“Luis Valdez.” Hello Vaia, www.hellovaia.com/explanations/english-literature/american-drama/luis-valdez/
“Luis Valdez.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 July 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Valdez. -
Sources
“Luis Valdez.” El Teatro Campesino, elteatrocampesino.com/about-luis/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023.
https://www.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/student-success/Profiles/Pages/Luis-Valdez.aspx