Notes from El Paso

You all know of the horrendous, racist mass murder in El Paso last weekend. What you may not know is that the East Side Institute’s development community is active in El Paso and its sister city Juárez and that we are continuing to use play, performance and social therapeutics to help people on the border develop in the face of hate and violence.

Below is a video report from our organizations on the border—Performing Communities de Esperanza, a coalition of Centro Fred Newman para la Terapia Social and the Institute for Improvisation and Social Action (ImprovISA). These organizations were founded by four alumni of the Institute’s International Class: Jorge Burciaga and Miguel Cortes from Cuidad Juárez and Paola Lopez and Chris Reyman from El Paso.  Oscar Lozoya, who graduated from the 2019 International Class, recently joined their team. “Group Play” is an improv workshop they hold regularly. The excerpts shown here took place in El Paso just four days after the massacre.

I have had the privilege of visiting El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, long the site of mass femicide and drug gang murders, a number of times, sharing social therapeutics and performance activism in support of what is being built there. I walked the streets of both cities and across the bridge that divides and connects them, US passport in hand. I remember the energy, and the despair; the desire for community, and the fear of violence. Our five institute alumni who are providing leadership on both sides of the Rio Grande inspire me deeply. They are in it for the long haul, convinced that the struggle to create developmental, peaceful environments didn’t begin last Saturday nor will it end tomorrow.