Teatro Paraguas: Esperanza at NHCC Barelas

Carlos Morton’s Esperanza adapts the story of the 1951 Empire Zinc strike in Bayard, NM, where Mexican American miners’ wives took over the picket line after the Taft-Hartley Act pushed the men off it, and sets that history to music with Teatro Paraguas doing the lifting. Salt of the Earth, the film this draws from, was itself blacklisted in the 1950s, so there’s a layer of American cultural suppression underneath the New Mexico labor history underneath the stage production. Tickets go through the NHCC website only, and the listing explicitly warns against third-party sellers, so don’t shortcut it.