Rubén Polendo, the artistic director of Theater Mitu, was raised in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Juarez is a fascinating place: It has the highest rate of literacy in Mexico, but it is also a bridge for 70 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S. While narcocorridos — songs glorifying the lives of violent drug dealers — get played in the nightclubs, victims' loved ones paint black crosses on pink backgrounds for the thousands of people, especially women, murdered during a turf war between cartels. In 2008 — the same year Juarez was designated "the murder capital of the world" — it was named "The City of the Future" by a leading journal for foreign direct investment. A few years later, there were more than 330 maquiladoras, predominately U.S.-owned assembly plants, in operation. Theater Mitu spent two years conducting interviews for Juárez: A Documentary Mythology, a complex fabric of experience, remembrance, and folklore in which actors use verbatim transcripts and become conduits to a place shaped by drugs, money, religion, violence, and politics.
Juárez opens at 8 p.m. through Sunday, July 26, at Z Space, 450 Florida St., S.F. $20; 415-626-0453 or zspace.org.
415-626-0453
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