Stereotypes In Moraga's Heroes And Saints

Race and religion have always been historically tied together, especially in California with our history of the mission system as a form of colonization. In Cherrie Moraga’s play Heroes and Saints, she confronts this directly through her characters using various racial projects. In their piece, Racial Formation in the United States, Omi and Winant define a racial project as a “historically situated action that represents and organizes human bodies in a hegemonic structure of power” (Omi and Winant 55). Repeated racial projects are what ultimately form race and the power dynamics that form with it. Moraga uses the image of Cerezita as the Virgen de Guadalupe leading the people to burn the crops to reinforce the play’s racial project that empowers the Mexican people and deserve the basic rights to health and happiness. First I will discuss the onstage image of the people or El Pueblo burning the crops that had essentially ruined the lives and health of the majority of the people in this community. The staged image of their unification and outrage at the injustices that have been forced upon them, clearly shows the racial project that they deserve the basic human right to health. By showing the characters …show more content…
Since this show deals so heavily with racial prejudice and assumptions, it subverts the stereotypes of the “traditional” Mexican, seen in our other reading Los Vendidos, by making the protagonist a disabled woman. The author also subverts stereotypes of gender and disability by writing Cerezita as both sexual and powerful. She also increases Cerezita’s power by making her a religious symbol. Using Cerezita as a leader for their small revolution, Moraga was able to empower different segments of the Mexican people that normally do not get to see themselves in roles of power and show them how to