Day 184/365 - The True History of Coca-Cola in Mexico, A Comedy

The effects of global commerce and corporate imperialism might seem an odd subject for a comedy, but it makes for a very funny play. Tonight I went to see Gala Hispanic Theatre's production of "The True History of Coca-Cola in Mexico." In keeping with the theme of the evening, I decided to have Mexican food for dinner before the show so I wandered a few blocks up from the theater's location in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, DC to Taqueria Distrito Federal.

It's tough to find good Mexican food in DC. While there are many people in the area whose families immigrated here from Central American countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, not many people have immigrated here from Mexico. As a result, most of the local Mexican restaurants are operated by Central Americans. The food is a bit more authentic than Chi Chi's, but it's still not the same. TDF is the real deal, however.

It's a small place, only a half-dozen or so tables inside and three on the patio out front. It's fast, cheap, good, and authentic. Well, as authentic as Mexican food gets in the U.S. anyhow. I don't know if you can ever exactly duplicate a national or regional cuisine in a restaurant in another location. It never tastes quite the same for some reason. TDF is definitely good, though. I ordered the Combo #3, which is five tacos, the dessert of the day, and a drink for only $13. It was one of the cheapest pre-theater meals I've ever had.

TDF has about a dozen different types of meat fillings for their tacos and you can pick and choose what you want in them. I opted for two pork tacos, one chicken, one bbq goat, and one bbq beef. The chicken one was a little dry, but the others were yum. The dessert was a tasty slice of flan and my drink, given the play I was seeing, had to be a Coke.

As I learned from the play, Mexico's per capita consumption of Coke is second only to that of the U.S. "The True History of Coca-Cola in Mexico" is a two-person play about a filmmaker and a performance artist from Seattle who decide to go to Mexico to make a documentary about American cultural and corporate globalization as symbolized by Coke's infiltration into Mexican society. The pair of actors that form the cast play a wide range of parts throughout the course of the play, including: the filmmakers; the tourists, farmers, and resort community workers they interview for the documentary; various figures from Mexican political history; and, in one particularly hilarious scene, the characters on a telenovela.

In their quest to document the extent to which American corporations have exploited and manipulated the Mexican people, the two filmmakers (who despite their loudly professed ideals are just as ignorant, patronizing, and chauvinistic as those they criticize) themselves exploit and manipulate a family of poor farmers in order to jazz up their documentary. While they start out to be liberators, in the end they wind up being just another kind of oppressor (although that's a fact that they themselves never seem to recognize).

The play is quite good and flows well, with the exception of a music video recreation scene at the end of the first act that just doesn't fit and doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose. The two performers are excellent and the set design, though simple, is effective. Gala Theatre itself is housed in an upstairs portion of the old Tivoli Theatre, formerly the most opulent movie palace in DC. Some of that opulence survives in the ornate ceiling of the theater, but it's not much compared to its former glory as revealed in the historical photos that line the walls leading to the theater.

"The True History of Coca-Cola in Mexico" is part ironic comedy, part satire, part history lesson, part political argument, and all good. And if you go to Taqueria Distrito Federal for dinner beforehand, it's even better.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)