la otra campaña / el otro lado: magic, migrations, machetes (notes from mictlan)

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....The Multikulti is an old baroque movie house on Avenida Constitución between 6th and 7th street in downtown TJ. After passing through the dark entrance area, you emerge into a large open-air amphitheater. It looks like there might once have been a roof, but it has been removed, or maybe there was never a roof. The walls are ragged concrete covered in graffiti, and they rise up high all around us and then crumble off against a sharp, stunning blue sky. We sit on a concrete floor that slants up from the stage several hundred feet to a terraced section that goes up another hundred feet, maybe more. I feel like I’m somewhere between Mad Max and Fellini, Thunderdome and Santa Sangre, and I’m expecting some carnivalesque funeral procession of psycho-road warriors to emerge at any moment with machetes and trombones. At one point, a brilliant, articulate young girl named Mixtli spray paints graffiti on the wall after delivering a stunning speech, while up above on the terraced area, an elder compañero stands all by himself half in shadow, half in bright sunlight, while playing the violin....

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