Declared in his 18th century baptismal record as “white,” José María Morelos y Pavón was mocked—once captured and put on trial—for his Negroid features and skin color: “In a kind of sarcasm, the Conciliar Board stipulated that In the unlikely event that he was not sentenced to death, he would have to be deported to Africa… (sic)”, researcher Kouakou Laurent Lalekou, from the Ivory Coast, tells us in his essay “The labyrinth of the invisibility of blacks in Mexico".
The portraits of our Independence hero have been whitewashed as have those of Vicente Guerrero, Juan Álvarez and many others. The loss of melanin of our heroes has been systematic and has achieved, for example, that many territories of our Mexico do not know today that they are also black; that they are proudly Afro and that black blood ran through their veins, like those of Emiliano Zapata. Get them!
Aldebarán Casasola is the author and director of the work In the middle of the honeydew (General Morelos), who approaches the character from some historical coordinates but letting his imagination fly: “A moving story where Jacinta, an indigenous woman who, after the murder of her son, will be convinced by a royalist army soldier to enter the insurgent camp and poison José María Morelos y Pavón,” reads the press release. And it is this character wonderfully embodied by Quy Lan Lachino who will lead us through the sites of Cuautla and the San Diego fort in Acapulco, as well as other battles to reveal to us the Generalissimo, powerfully embodied by Mauricio Pimentel.
Between Jacinta's failed attempts to poison Morelos, doubt and sympathy for the hero will grow. Beautiful scenic work that recovers for us a character that both dramaturgy and national cinema (Antonio Serrano's version is wonderful) have repeatedly sought to portray. Don't miss it this Sunday and two more at 12:00 p.m. at Teatro La Capilla, Madrid 13, Coyoacán.
