An Analogous Theater
competition proposal, honorable mention2017
a collaboration with Juan Andrés Suarez
An Analogous Theater on Arch Out Loud ︎
An Analogous Theater reimagines the Zócalo of Tenancingo, a town in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala where the sex trafficking industry has become deeply entrenched. The competition asked how a modified square might reshape a community’s mindset and change the image of a town where exploitation has been normalized. We reframed the question: how might the people the traffickers exploit make those traffickers the subject of ridicule, and claim the image of their wealth for public use? The Tlaxcalan people have answered this question before. Under Spanish colonial rule, the hacienda system trapped indigenous laborers in debt while hacienda owners held lavish, exclusive fiestas. In response, Tlaxcalans took over the streets and plazas with extravagant costumes and dances that mocked the colonizers, a tradition that survives more than three centuries later as the Tlaxcala Carnival. Today the traffickers operate from elaborate mansions scattered across the countryside. Our approach is subtractive. Rather than make an expressive authorial gesture, we draw a simple frame around the Zócalo: a permanent peristyle whose edges each respond to their context, namely the stepped plaza, the market, and the cathedral, which the frame recenters within the square. This peristyle quotes and captures caricatures of the traffickers’ mansions, and within it the community can stage a new carnival, building and destroying those mansions as a collective act of protest. The square becomes a theater of resistance, and architecture becomes a medium through which a community can expose and confront the constructedness of exploitation in its territory.
