Luis Valdez's Los Vendidos

Luis Valdez's Los Vendidos

"Los Vendidos," which translates from the literal Spanish to "The Sold Ones" or a more appropriate translation of the title is "The Sell Outs." This is a satiric play written by Luis Valdez and performed by "El Teatro Campesino," which translates into "The Farmworkers’ Theater." El Teatro Campesino, founded by Luis Valdez in 1965, was a group of California farmworkers who put together "Actos," or "Skits." These "Actos" were made mainly to entertain "striking farmworkers, support them in their marches, and attract public attention to their strikes and organization" (http://www.pbs.org/chicano/bios/lvaldez.html). Though there is much comedy in the play, it brings about many important social issues that faced Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the U.S. during the 1960’s. Even after almost three decades, these social issues are still apparent in Mexican-American society and others as well. While I was aware of such movements, such as the Black Panthers’ movement observed in African-American history, I was never aware of the hardships facing Latin@s, such as Chicanos, in the U.S. By analyzing "Los Vendidos" through class readings, class notes, notes from a speaker, and Internet resources, I can easily further my understanding of a society that was in need of equality.

In the first part of the video, our "Latin@s in the U.S.A." class was shown part of Chicano! The part of the video documentary that our class saw showed us a brief summary of what life was like for Mexicans in the 1960’s. The way Mexicans were treated by the U.S. government wasn’t fair. For instance this is seen, in Chicano!, when "journalist Ruben Salazar, who is the news director of KMEX and a columnist for the L.A. Times,...

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...em did not want to go.

After watching "Los Vendidos," and after laughing a little or a lot, all the underlying messages, or most of them, are jumping straight out of the film. The more the film is watched, the more the underlying messages you’ll find dwelling in this bed of knowledge and hidden beneath the sheets of comedy and sarcasm. At the end, we find out that Honest Sancho was the real robot and that all the people he was trying to sell were just acting. Each member in the lot feels for Eric, whose real name is Kiki, because he really did not want to leave with the secretary, Miss Jimenez. Though it seemed throughout the play that Chicanos did not know what to do, the last segment of the play clarifies all. By taking out a map, the Chicanos continue to work systematically figuring out how to disperse as many Chicanos to as many communities as possible.