Devil May Care: “El Mexorcist” Guillermo Gómez-Peña Will Exorcise Your Border Anxiety

Performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a member of the San Francisco-based collective “La Pocha Nostra,” is attempting to alleviate national panic concerning the issue of immigration by scaring the living crap out of us all.

In his cyber punkesque performance — called “El Mexorcist 4: America’s Most Wanted Inner Demon” — addresses issues like nativism, xenophobia, border security and cultural identity among other things.

Gómez-Peña explains how he came up with the name of his piece:

It’s like a word game on the whole kind of “mexiphobia” that emerged in the last three or four years. When the border become the, quote unquote, most sensitive zone of our national security, and the potential entry point for international terrorists, the U.S.-Mexico border became the second front on the war on terror. And migrants from the south became an extension of Arab terrorists, so there was (building) racism and one of the focal points was Arizona. So I created these performance personae to kind of exorcise those fears and hopefully call for a better understanding of our relationship with our southern neighbor, with Mexico.

But lest you start believing his performances are reminiscent of your former college dorm mates’ propensity to cover themselves in body paint and simulate fellatio on a Barbie doll as a poignant commentary on the plight of salon employees in the mid 1950s, “El Mexorcist” is quick to point out that humor and levity play an important role in getting his message across to audiences:

It’s crucial, and this is something I learned from Chicanismo and from Mexican culture. I think that both Mexican and Chicano culture are extremely irreverent. We don’t hold anything sacred. We laugh at everything, we laugh at ourselves. It’s a way of coping with problems. It’s a very useful performance strategy. If the audience can relax and lower their defenses, you can deal with very sensitive issues in ways that you couldn’t deal with if you were much more heavy-handed. For me it’s an important element. Satire, political satire, humor, irreverence are also kind of like not taking myself very seriously, because the last thing I want to do is preach.

Mexcellent.

El Mexorcist: Performance artist aims to exorcise fears about border [Tuscon Citizen]