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NEW LAND THEATRICALS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes the values of diversity, inclusion and reinvention implicit in the 'mestizaje' of the Americas through the development and production of top-class dance and music theater shows and educational programs advocating for the idea of 'Cultural Panamericanism'.
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MESTIZAJE
 

Mezcla de culturas distintas, que da origen a una nueva*

(Mix of different cultures, which originates a new one)

* Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy

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In the year 2000, Carolina Lizarraga and Roque García began to work together in Venezuela in a theatrical project about what it means to be 'mestizo' and the treasure behind it. Their passion for dance, music and theater along with the eclecticism of their family heritage were the ingredients for ambitious conceptions full of fusion and… yes, some fascinating confusion, because that is what 'mestizaje' is all about!

2005 was a turning point for them as NLT’s first show “Venezuela Viva” had an unprecedented and significant impact in the largest arts festival in the world (the Edinburgh Festival Fringe) being one of the Top 10 Best-selling shows among more than 2,000 shows in 200 venues.

 

In 2014 they moved to New York for 5 years to consolidate their knowledge of the commercial theater industry, building a valuable network both artistic and institutional.

Today, NEW LAND THEATRICALS is based in Miami, the multicultural capital of the Americas, and after 20 years delighting audiences in countries such as Holland, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Argentina, Mexico, United States of America, England, Taiwan and Venezuela, reaffirms its commitment to expand a universal message of human reinvention, creativity and hope.

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Arturo Uslar Pietri - Reflections about mestizaje
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THE MESTIZAJE

AND THE NEW WORLD

by Arturo Uslar Pietri

Since the eighteenth century, at least, the dominant concern in the minds of Hispanic Americans has been that of self-identity. All those who have turned their gaze, with some care, to the panorama of these peoples have agreed, in some way, in pointing out this feature. Some has argued about an ontological anguish of the Creole, searching relentlessly for himself, between contradictory inheritances and dissimilar relationships, at times feeling exiled in his own land, at times acting as a conqueror of it, with a fluid notion that everything is possible and nothing is given in a definitive and proven way.

Successively and even simultaneously, many representative men of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking America naively believed, or pretended, to be what they obviously were not and could not be. There was a time they thought of themselves as noblemen of Castile, as there was later to imagine themselves as Europeans in exile in unequal struggle against native barbarism. There were those who tried with all their soul to appear French, English, German and North American. Later there were those who believed themselves indigenous and set out to claim the fullness of an aboriginal civilization irrevocably interrupted by the Conquest, and there were also, in certain regions, those who felt possessed by a black soul and tried to resurrect an African past.


Culturally they were not European, much less could they be 'Indians' or Africans ...

*    *    *

…Hispanic America is perhaps the only great area open in the world today to the process of creative cultural "mestizaje". Instead of looking at this extraordinary characteristic as a mark of backwardness or inferiority, it must be considered as the most fortunate and favorable circumstance for the New World vocation that has been associated from the beginning to the American destiny to be affirmed and extended.

It is on the basis of this fruitful and powerful "mestizaje" that the personality of Hispanic America, its originality and its creative task can be affirmed. With everything that comes to it from the past and present, Hispanic America can define a new time, a new direction and a new language for the expression of mankind, without forcing or adulterating the most constant and valuable of his collective being, which is his aptitude for living and creative "mestizaje".

It is now open and ready to receive and transform in a great attempt at unity and synthesis the living present of its multiple heritages and to carry out, on the eve of the 21st century, a feat of renewal and cultural rebirth similar to the one Rome did in its time, or did the West.

 

Its vocation and its opportunity is to carry out the new stage of cultural "mestizaje" that is going to be that of its time in the history of culture. All that deviates from that will be to divert Latin America from its natural path and deny it its manifest destiny, which is none other than to fully fulfill the promise of the Garcilasos, the Bolívars, the Daríos, the builders of cathedrals, for the work of a New World.

EVERYONE IS MESTIZO TO SOME DEGREE


The American Society of Human Genetics affirms: Genetics exposes the concept of “racial purity” as scientifically meaningless.

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The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), founded in 1948, is the primary professional membership organization for specialists in human genetics worldwide. Based on the value of genetic diversity and genetic knowledge related to ancestry and genomic diversity, the ASHG affirms the following:

- Genetics demonstrates that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct subcategories. Although there are clear observable correlations between variation in the human genome and how individuals identify by race, the study of human genetics challenges the traditional concept of different races of humans as biologically separate and distinct. This is validated by many decades of research.

- Most human genetic variation is distributed as a gradient, so distinct boundaries between population groups cannot be accurately assigned. There is considerable genetic overlap among members of different populations. Such patterns of genome variation are explained by patterns of migration and mixing of different populations throughout human history. In this way, genetics exposes the concept of “racial purity” as scientifically meaningless.

- It follows that there can be no genetics-based support for claiming one group as superior to another. Although a person’s genetics influences their phenotypic characteristics, and self-identified race might be influenced by physical appearance, race itself is a social construct. Any attempt to use genetics to rank populations demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of genetics.

- The past decade has seen the emergence of strategies for assessing an individual’s genetic ancestry. Such analyses are providing increasingly accurate ways of helping to define individuals’ ancestral origins and enabling new ways to explore and discuss ancestries that move us beyond blunt definitions of self-identified race.

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