El Despido
(excerpt from the script, narrated by the leader of the group via YouTube)

Queridos hijos se acerca la hora de la justicia. Acuerdanse que Jesus fue revolucionario, guerrillero para los pobres. Uds. caminan en los pasos de nuestro Rey. Sean firme, decididos y representen nuestra causa con todo el furor de los Angeles de Dios al enfrentarse con los diablos del infierno. Nuestros hermanos y hermanas han vivido siglos de esclavitud y opresion Uds. van a dar un paso para establecer justicia en nuestro mundo.

Vayan a la calle de la pared y rompan un gran hueco en esa maldita pared, para que toda la humanidad refleje en el futuro de nuestro mundo. Uds. Son revolucionarios para los pobres que no tienen voz, para el indio, el obrero, los trabajadores sin poder ni esperanza, para los indocumentados en un mundo en que las fronteras de naciones son ficciones establecidas por el razismo y las ambiciones del capitalismo. Jovenes los quiero mucho, que vayan con Dios, nos veremos en el reino de nuestro padre.

power is diffused throughout the social field, constituting individual subjectivities and their knowledge and pleasures, colonizing the body itself, utilizing its forces while inducing obedience and conformity... Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are. (Foucault, 1988)

Three Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino Terror Revolutionaries gather in a hotel room in Connecticut seeking to help establish a balance toward justice for the crimes committed by the government and military of the United States of America toward small and poor nation states, other cultures and peoples, the environment and the earth in general. This will be an act that will momentarily disrupt the engine of violent globalization and force all people to reflect upon the course of humanity.

El Rito Apasionado has been inspired by the rhetoric and tactics revolving around immigration used by Southern conservative officials to capitalize upon Homeland Security and the national fear mechanism to recieve funding toward militarizing the border. The claim that impoverished undocumented immigrants represent a terrorist threat is insincere and opportunist.

I believe that we must regain control of our dangerously porous borders, and we must cut off the employment magnet that drives illegal immigration... I am steadfastly opposed to any form of amnesty...that would provide a path to citizenship to illegal aliens, or any expansion of guest worker programs.
Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado)

No immigration reform, no amnesty, no guest worker programs... such legislative perspectives are retrograde and ignorant of the world we live in and perhaps most importantly are not realistic.

El Rito Apasionado commissioned for 50,000 BEDS will be screened at REAL ART WAYS from July 21st through September 23rd.

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Interview with Chris Doyle from 50,000 Beds Catalog

Chris: Your project seems very tied to the current climate of fear. Is that how you see it?

Ricardo: As I considered various possibilities for the video, national headlines and stories revolved around the Secure Fence Act that Bush signed in 2006. At the start of 2007, the new Congress delayed appropriation of funds toward various pieces of the Act - an interlocking surveillance camera system, about 850 miles of double layered fence, increased Border Patrol, and so on. Apparently the wall and its funds were shrinking. Since the concept of a giant concrete and steel wall accompanied with networked surveillance cameras and unmanned border drones immediately conjure up the image of a concentration camp and a 1984-type reality, I was relieved to hear that appropriations were being delayed.

However, the rhetoric and tactics used by representatives pushing the wall kept cropping up in my mind, because these guys have latched onto the national fear mechanism that the Bush administration has constructed (as the war on terror) to gain support in the militarization of the border. To collapse issues of immigration and border crossing with terrorism is manipulative, insincere and opportunist. So, as with much of my work, it was the media and current events that served as a catalyst toward planning a parody in which three Latino men gather in a hotel room to plan an attack on Wall Street.

Chris: I was interested in the way the video starts out as one thing, and then transforms into something very different. How did that come about?

Ricardo: I enlisted a Cuban friend Anibal Pella and a Mexican friend Angel Navarez to help me with this video. Since none of us are actors, I knew a parody would fail. Ultimately, I was much more interested in creating a sincere reflection of this moment in time. I gathered the three of us because each one of us has a complex relationship to being a U.S. resident. Three men coming together to prepare for a suicide bombing was merely a prelude to a highly personal and nuanced discussion on the interventionist history between the United States and the countries that we each come from, dovetailing into reflections on the current war in Iraq. The coupling of a sequence referencing suicide bombing with a personal conversation was designed to underscore the frustration, guilt and helplessness that I and many of my friends feel as citizens of this country. Frustration at the re-election of Bush, guilt at the fact that we as tax payers and consumers sponsor death and helplessness, that no matter how much we march in protest the wars will continue. For these reasons the video that begins with preparations for violence ends with the question "What do we do?"