The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been in the minority… It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority. Such a group may transform America’s greatest dilemma into her most glorious opportunity.
Background
Guillermo Gomez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue, and director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. His performance works and many publications have contributed to the debates on cultural diversity, border culture, and US-Mexico relations.
Interests
For twenty years, Gómez-Peña has been exploring intercultural issues with the use of mixed genres and experimental languages. His work, which includes performance art, video, audio, installations, poetry, journalism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, “extreme culture” and new technologies in the era of globalization. Continually developing multi-centric narratives and large-scale performance projects from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña creates what critics have termed “Chicano cyber-punk performances,” and “ethno-techno art.” In his work, cultural borders have moved to the center while the alleged mainstream is pushed to the margins and treated as exotic and unfamiliar, placing the audience members in the position of “foreigners” or “minorities.”