Nonviolent Message Absent in ‘Zapatistas’

In a city plagued with violence, where the police are outgunned by bank robbers and school principals are more concerned with gun control than winning football games, it is chilling to hear a call to arms to liberate the downtrodden.

It is even more so when surrounded by high school students attending the Saturday night show. In Mario Zapien’s “Zapatistas,” playing at the Nosotros Theatre, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and their successful nonviolence campaigns are forgotten. Instead, because “Mexico has been sold to the foreigners,” the proud few “have the opportunity to die fighting.”

Told in fragmented, non-chronological sequences, the action moves from mythological to historical planes of reality. Masked actors appear as deities to humorously mime or act as a Greek chorus. The last days of Emiliano Zapata and the uprising of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) are represented. Yet with this sometimes heavy symbolism and obvious message, the humanity of Zapata is lost in abstraction as are most of the characters (something made more problematic by Zapien’s plodding direction).

Zapien is far from evenhanded; he doesn’t hint at the repercussions of violence on the oppressors themselves.

* “Zapatistas (Morelos, 1910-Chiapas 1994),” Nosotros Theatre, 1314 N. Wilton Place, Hollywood. In English, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. In Spanish, Sundays, 1 p.m. Ends April 27. $12. (818) 760-1328, (213) 465-4167. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.