TV Reviews : ‘Border Brujo’: Exorcising Demons

Essentially a documentation of a live performance that took place in San Diego in 1990, “Border Brujo” (at 11 tonight on KCET Channel 28) is pretty straightforward. Don’t expect slick production trickery. The real worth is in the opportunity to catch a 50-minute glimpse of one of the premier exponents of the view that the border between the United States and Mexico is a global cultural metaphor.

Mexican performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena believes that the territorial junction between these two countries--the surreal netherland where the First and Third Worlds clash day-in and day-out--symbolizes a new hybrid culture and consciousness in the making.

Speaking in tongues as well as in English, Spanish, Spanglish and Nahuatl, he offers several entertaining personae, from an incense-burning shaman to a velvet-voiced romantico . Laden with a heavy dose of self-conscious intellectualism, the work--which could also be called Foucault meets Cantinflas--has its searing moments. In one section, Gomez-Pena dons a Mexican wrestler’s mask but seems, ironically, his most vulnerable and convincing.

Sitting amid an impressive altar constructed by Felix Almada, Gomez-Pena sometimes comes across as a politically correct Howard Stern on mushrooms. Even so, he attempts with an admirable earnestness to exorcise the racist demons, debilitating stereotypes and warped preconceptions that dictate relations between Mexicans and Americans.

Careening from irreverent incandescence to biting satire, he is a charismatic performer. Although he occasionally falls into sound-bite sloganeering, he demonstrates, by the end of the piece, the power of performance art well-done.

It’s too bad KCET scheduled this opposite Arsenio and the late-night news because “Border Brujo” belongs in prime time, where it could more profoundly assault the vapid sitcoms and commercial propaganda saturating the airwaves like man-made viruses gone mad.