A satirical play banned from the Mexican stage in 1790 made it to the early secular settlements of Alta California where a troupe of soldiers and possibly other colonists performed it. The play, Astucias por heredar: un sobrino a un tío survived in the Bancroft library collection and this talk will present the context of its provenance, its author, Fermín de Reygadas, as well as the ways in which the play performed an unsanctioned narrative about the metropolis in the northern border of Spain’s last colonial advance.
The talk is led by Professor Pedro García-Caro, Director of the Latin American Studies Program and Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon. García-Caro's research focuses on the relations between nationalist narratives and the discourses of progress and modernity as seen by intellectuals and writers in Latin America, the US, and Spain. His critical edition of the first Spanish play performed in colonial California, Astucias por heredar un sobrino a un tío, was published in the Fall 2016 in Arte Público Press (Houston).