TV REVIEWS : ‘La Carpa’: Bittersweet Love and Chicano Social History

Local television seems absolutely paralyzed by a diminishingly Eurocentric L.A.

Were proponents of Chicano Studies, for instance, ever to venture off campus and get a foot in the door of the entertainment industry, a drama like the flavorful Latino fable “La Carpa” (tonight at 9 on KCET-TV Channel 28, 8 p.m. on KPBS-TV Channel 15) would be the rule, not the exception.

For a non-Latino viewer, this quaint, bittersweet story about racism, young love and a traveling Chicano tent show in the grape fields of Depression-era California is a refreshing slice of social history.

Directed and produced by Carlos Avila, who co-wrote the tale with Edit Villareal, this short (55 minute) movie on “American Playhouse” dramatizes what, in effect, is the political legacy of Cesar Chavez and the theatrical legacy of Luis Valdez.

La Carpa means tent theater, and the family-run, raucous, primitive, bedizened little circus that pulls up in a truck, unfurls its banner and entertains these dusty campesinos is a direct 1930s forerunner of Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino actos that flowered in the San Joaquin Valley 40 years later. Seen in this light, the movie is also a bridge to the current Chicano theatrical comedy troupe Culture Clash.

In “La Carpa,” tragedy and reality blend into a fable. A young, shy field worker (the quiet, wide-eyed Jaime Gomez) witnesses the slaying of his best friend by a nervous “Oakie” deputy (Bryan Travis Smith) who himself is victimized of his innocence. Nobody reports the murder, including the Mexican-American mayor who conspires with the Anglo Establishment to keep silent.

It is only the unwitting arrival of the carpa, a raggedy version of the cavalry, that salvages the life of the young eyewitness as he stumbles into their vaudeville camp. They recruit him out of the vineyards, teach him the acting game and even improvise a skit that parodies the murder cover-up and the mayor’s complicity.

Most welcome are Chicano characters who speak all their dialogue in Spanish (accompanied by subtitles), mixed with occasional idiomatic English expressions. Events, though, are quite easy to follow for non-Spanish-speaking viewers.