Los Vendidos (The Sellouts)

Duration: 12:00

Year Published: 1972

Creator: Teatro Campesino

Complete Record: documents a one-act play by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez, a founding member of El Teatro Campesino. He wrote it in 1967, and it was first performed at the Brown Beret junta in Elysian Park, East Los Angeles addressing a young urban Chicano audience concerned with sociopolitical issues. Adapting themes previously employed--such as the praise of in--group solidarity and the denunciation of personal success when it entails materialism and cultural disloyalty--the satiric target focuses on the stereotypical images of Chicanos. The characters include Honest Sancho, the unnamed Secretary, the Farmworker, the Pachuco, the Revolucionario, and the Mexican-American. In the action of the play, the Secretary, named only Miss Jimenez (pronounced: JIM-enez), visits Honest Sancho's Used Mexican Lot and Mexican Curio Shop to purchase a robot. She is from Governor Ronald Reagan's office, and needs "a Mexican type” for the administration. Don’t miss this hilarious and barbed treatise on Chicano civil rights.