Since the early 1990s, the borderlands south of El Paso have played host to an ongoing murder mystery. There, in and around Ciudad Juárez, hundreds of female corpses have been dumped, many showing signs for torture and mutilation. Thousands more women and girls have disappeared, a high percentage of whom were workers in the area’s many maquiladors, factories built to fill the increased demand for cheap labor that came with signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Other pieces of the puzzle include the area’s intensely violent narcotics trade (which also fills an acute U.S. demand), along with the role of police and other Mexican officials, which can range from turning a blind eye to active collusion.
It’s good to know this in advance, because Hilary Bettis’s The Ghosts of Lote Bravo doesn’t supply anywhere near the necessary data to contextualize its story of a 15-year-old girl whose abject need to find work fatally leads her into the underworld depths of Lote Bravo (a subsection of Ciudad Juárez); and her mother’s efforts to find out what’s become of her.
Desperate at least to learn of her daughter’s fate, Juanda (Kylie Castaneda) goes against her Catholic faith and prays to la Santa Muerte (Gabriella Cefalu), who provides episodic visions of the pertinent events. Central among these is Raquel’s (Natalia Caraballo) meeting of El Reloj (Brendan Backman), a 16-year-old sicario (hitman) working for Lote Bravo’s main crime boss. The pair consummate a romance and make plans to flee to America, but escaping Juárez’s cycle of degradation and death isn’t so easy.
The Ghosts of Lote Bravo aspires to be about the depth and viscosity of the moral quicksand that paves those mean streets, and how much complicity—forced or otherwise—it takes to make and maintain such a quagmire. Juanda feels guilty for compelling Raquel to venture out into Lote Bravo’s perilous nightlife and turning a blind eye to Raquel’s prostitution. El Reloj feels guilty for being the one to introduce Raquel into this world. El Reloj’s father (Riky Garcia) feels guilty for being a cop in the pocket of the narcos. And they are all guilty, yet all victims of circumstance. “It’s dangerous to think that sin and sinner is so black-and-white,” says la Santa Muerte.
But we never really get into that. Bettis is guilty of one of the most common gaffes you’ll see in “issue” plays: too little meat in the writing, as if the meatiness of the issue will flesh out the play on its own. Presumably this is why Bettis gives us so little background, not even mentioning the narcotics trade but once—and then only peripherally—while neglecting the role of legal commerce entirely. She spends more effort developing a bull (i.e., the animal) motif that ends up completely incoherent.
For her part, director Denise Blasor is guilty of one the most common gaffes you’ll see in theatre: she allows her young actors to yell almost all of their lines, regardless of context. Histrionics are so prevalent—including in what should be some of the play’s quietest moments—that there’s nowhere for the actors to go when fervent delivery is actually called for.
The production also lacks for detail. It’s fine to be minimalist, but if you’ve got dialog explicitly saying that to call la Santa Muerte you need to erect a candlelit shrine, maybe at least have a candle onstage somewhere?
Although The Ghosts of Lote Bravo means to confront us with a terrible reality, neither the writing nor California Repertory’s execution puts us in touch with anything the feels like the real world. With gravitas giving way to melodrama, this feels like a student production through and through.
The Ghosts of Lote Bravo at California Repertory – Cal State Long Beach:
Times: Tues-Sat 7:30 p.m. and Sat-Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through Sept. 30
Cost: $18-$23
Details: (562) 985-5526, CALREP.ORG
Venue: CSULB Studio Theater, Theatre Arts Building (South Campus), Long Beach