On stage, jaguar woman seeks to dislocate white patriarchy

▲ Cristina Woodward (left) and Raquel Araujo (center), from the Yucatecan company Teatro de la Rendija. Photo courtesy of the group .

Daniel López Aguilar

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, August 1, 2025, p. 4

There are houses that silently crumble, stone by stone, until only their breath remains trapped in the rubble. In Your Broken Body or Twenty Black Days, that breath becomes song: a plural voice that preserves the echo of a collective memory fractured by history, violence, heritage, and racism.

Since yesterday, the musical has been presented at the Julio Castillo Forest Theater of the Centro Cultural del Bosque (CCB), by the Teatro de la Rendija company.

Directed by Raquel Araujo and with original music by Germán Romero, the proposal is a journey to the telluric heart of memory.

The plot begins with Manuel's return to the old family home in Mérida, destined for demolition, but it will not disappear without first revealing everything it has contained: deaths, childhood, the nanny who cared for him, witness stones and echoes of great-grandfather Ignacio, survivor of the Chancenote massacre during the Caste War.

The stones, mirrors, photographs, lizards and doorframes challenge Manuel , Araujo explained in an interview with La Jornada .

This interaction defines the drama: the home challenges, history shakes, and memory hurts. Aurora, a nanny and mythological figure who embodies the Mayan caregivers, observes and participates.

For the director, she goes beyond a character: she is the granddaughter of the Lord of Xibalba, traverses time, and transforms into a jaguar woman. She dismantles, stone by stone, the structure of white patriarchy.

The production interweaves diverse languages: live music without an orchestra, but with the Túumben Paax choir, singing in the Mayan language, inflatable sculptures that represent the dreamlike space, and lights that vibrate to the rhythm of the story.

Romero described his score as an attempt to capture the sonic universe of a story that was beyond me . Conceived over nearly three decades after reading Nelson Reed's The Caste War in Yucatán , the staging incorporates leitmotifs that symbolize the house and its emotional strain.

The place where Manuel is turns into ruin, and the music accompanies that decay like mold on the walls , the composer added.

Conceived by six people during the pandemic, with the collaboration of Mayan poet and linguist Sasil Sánchez, the stage creation poses an intense clash of symbolic forces, without offering moral lessons or hopeful resolutions.

The process took place remotely, with multiple experiments and adjustments. Three different perspectives on the same topic that expanded toward shared interests , Araujo summarized.

The inclusion of the Mayan language represented a phonetic and musical challenge, as well as an act of cultural affirmation. Singing in Mayan has been one of the greatest challenges because, as a tonal language, the musicality is already present in its pronunciation. The narrative unfolds in temporal layers: 1964, 1848, and the present, with deliberate anachronisms. The plot presents an intentional treatment of time, mixing eras to generate an anachronistic effect , the director acknowledged. Manuel does not act as the protagonist, but as a trigger. Through him, the story of Ignacio, her great-grandfather, protected by Aurora during the Chancenote massacre, where her mother was murdered, is revealed .

Teatro de la Rendija, based in Yucatán, explores the folds of the body and memory. Performing on stage are Katenka Ángeles, Lázaro González, Juan Ramón Góngora, Cristina Woodward, Mariana Palma, Ángel González, and Araujo herself, accompanied by the Túumben Paax choir, made up of Lucía Olmos, Lorena Barranco, Mitzy Chávez, Itzel Servín, and Tatiana Burgos.

The split body has to do with the interbreeding and internal multiplicity that defines us: thoughts, emotions, and decisions , the director emphasized.

Mérida, marked by deep social divisions, serves as a metaphor for this fracture. Although there have been significant changes in the last decade, much of this is due to a vigorous movement of Mayan-speaking poets with a strong linguistic activism, like Sasil.

Araujo recalled that the performances in Yucatán generated intense discussions, some under the format called " reverse debate ," a dynamic created by Flavio Desgranges that doesn't delve into opinions, but rather into memories and emotions: "What do you remember?" "What shook you?"

There is no single central character. Everyone is part of this ghost story: the lizards that watch from the walls, the stones, the Mayan language, which is not mere ornamentation, but a possibility for another perspective.

Performances at the Julio Castillo Forest Theater, today at 8 p.m., Saturday, August 2 at 7 p.m., and Sunday, August 3 at 6 p.m. Tickets cost 150 pesos.