Culture Clash: Latino Satire on a ‘Mission’

Amid the piety and the protests, about the only thing missing so far from the emotional campaign to elevate Father Junipero Serra to sainthood has been a sense of humor.

No more. In a biting, multimedia revue called “The Mission,” three young Latino comedians calling themselves Culture Clash are taking an irreverent look at the 18th-Century Franciscan who founded Mission San Juan Capistrano and eight others in the state.

The group characterizes the play as a brown--rather than a black--comedy, and true to the spirit of Lenny Bruce, there is something to offend just about everyone in “The Mission,” starting with the opening narration.

As Herbert Siguenza, dressed in a Franciscan habit and posed like one of the many Serra statues, is bathed in a small pool of light, a disembodied voice solemnly intones the achievements of the “Apostle of California” beatified last fall by Pope John Paul II. Then the kicker:

“One man . . . one vision . . . one million Indios wiped out by murder, disease and torture. And at least five known cases of the dreaded jock itch. Father Serra loved his little savages. No Indian was buried before his time.”

Siguenza, as Serra, then steps down from his pedestal and recalls the beatification in Rome, admitting, “Yes, I’m feeling a little smug about the whole affair, and why not? . . . One day they will name hospitals and schools for me. One day they will construct a stupid statue of me on Highway 280.”

The controversy over Serra’s status has focused on how much personal responsibility Serra had for the suffering of California Indians under the mission system he established. Serra’s defenders say that he did the best he could and that he should not be judged by contemporary standards. But Indian scholars charge that there were those in the church--even before Serra’s time--who believed that native cultures did not have to be crushed in order to bring Christianity, and that forceful conversion and corporal punishment were wrong.

Rick Salinas, playing one of Serra’s Indian charges, tires of the priest’s mistreatment and decides to take peyote and travel to the future to warn his descendants against canonizing Serra. Salinas emerges 200 years later in San Francisco’s Mission district as a member of Culture Clash, which is struggling to make it in the entertainment mainstream without abandoning its heritage.

For the remainder of the evening, Culture Clash takes a withering look at the way European and Anglo civilization has influenced--often diluting and sometimes destroying--American Indian cultures. Stereotypes and ethnic prejudices are favorite topics, and Culture Clash manages to touch most if not all of the bases, up to and including “official language” campaigns and Anglo resentment over undocumented workers winning the lottery.

But they also look inward. Before the night is over, those who also take hits--some of them loving--include Edward James Olmos, Fernando Valenzuela, Rita Moreno, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Castaneda, Cesar Chavez, Freddy Fender, Erik Estrada, Richie Valens, Linda Ronstadt’s mariachi band, Che Guevara, Al Pacino in “Scarface,” Carlos Santana, Jackson Browne, Holly Near, Los Lobos, Bertolt Brecht’s “fourth wall,” the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Barry Manilow.

“The Mission” is a low-budget show, produced in association with El Teatro Campesino, which began as a guerrilla theater group during the Delano farm workers strike. Culture Clash is now a part of El Teatro Campesino, largely through the recommendation of Luis Valdez, El Teatro’s artistic director and the director of “La Bamba.” Valdez calls Culture Clash “the cutting edge of fresh, new, Latino comic genius.”

“The Mission” was honed and reshaped during lab productions at El Teatro Campesino’s headquarters in San Juan Bautista and in high schools and colleges in the Los Angeles area. Playing Los Angeles this fall with its newly polished version of “The Mission” is a major goal, Salinas said.

Meanwhile, the troupe is playing to audiences of 50 people a night in the Asian-American Theatre Center, a small San Francisco theater above a pizzeria. But Culture Clash appears to be nearing a breakthrough. It has taped an eight-minute segment for public television, scheduled for inclusion this fall in a nationally televised series, “Comedy Tonight.” Last week, Culture Clash was featured on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” Profiles of the group are scheduled for California and Mother Jones magazines.

Frequently scatological, the material is uneven and occasionally still rough around the edges. In an instant it can go from being silly, juvenile and parochial to being subtle, sophisticated and worldly. Culture Clash’s humor is angry and often political, but not doctrinaire. While most of the satire is directed at the dominant European culture, the Left and the counterculture come in for their share of jibes. “Politically correct” humor and commitment to La Communidad are targets--”I was a Chicano before you were!” shouts Richard Montoya at one point--and one bit, involving a three-headed, Latin American folk singer, is priceless.

Serra is not completely forgotten when the action shifts to the present. A brilliant sketch has Siguenza, this time as a member of Culture Clash, taking a regular job when his comedy career is stalled. Like several members of the group in “Ghostbusters II,” Siguenza has been reduced to entertaining at kids’ parties. So, again dressed as Serra, he takes a job at “Taqueria Serra,” where he does a hilarious variation of Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine about how Anglos choose Mexican restaurants.

Some of the best bits of the evening are Latino versions of better-known efforts. A series of blackout auditions for white producers is similar to the one involving black actors in the film “Hollywood Shuffle.” A plot to kidnap Julio Iglesias--Siguenza does a dead-on impression--in order to win a shot on national television, kicking off the “Father Serra Camino Real Tour,” is right out of the “King of Comedy.” But, given the universal nature of prejudice and ambition, these bits still work well.

The troupe also spoofs several well-known public service announcements on television, like the ubiquitous anti-drug message featuring eggs in a frying pan. Using story boards, Montoya explains, “This is your brains. . . . This is your brains on drugs. . . . This is your brains on drugs with chorizos.” Siguenza gives a Latin twist to the famous United Negro College appeal, the one which recently tripped up Dan Quayle, by complaining that “a Mayan is a terrible thing to waste.”

Peppered with such wordplay, the evening is sometimes reminiscent of the old “Firesign Theater.” At one point, Montoya warns Salinas of the pointlessness of trying to prevent the canonization, slipping into a spoken and then sung version of “Que Serra, Serra.” At another point, the troupe, as tough gang members, begins a menacing chant of “Colors!” which segues to a cheerful rendition of “De Colores.”

The gang material is the most original of the evening, and Culture Clash members say it travels the best when the group plays urban areas outside California, where audiences are unfamiliar with Father Serra. Salinas, Montoya and Siguenza--all raised in middle-class homes--pull off the extremely difficult task of spoofing the deadly serious phenomenon without approving of its effects or denigrating the individuals who are caught up in it. Montoya said that even gang members have told them how much they like the material because it so accurately satirized people they recognize.

The 5-year-old group’s members, all of whom live in San Francisco’s Mission district, range in age from late 20s to early 30s and in education from a year in college to two degrees. Salinas and Siguenza are the children of Salvadoran immigrants. Montoya is the son of the poet Jose Montoya.

In an interview, members acknowledged that that they chose the Serra sainthood issue primarily as a vehicle to showcase the group’s more contemporary work, at a time when the San Francisco newspapers were full of the controversy in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s visit to San Francisco and Carmel, where Serra founded another famous mission and where he is buried.

“It just seemed like the perfect thing for Culture Clash,” said Siguenza, “because it was a culture clash--the Spaniards coming into indigenous California.”

After carefully reading all the pros and cons of the complex sainthood issue, Salinas said cheerfully, “We chose the con.”