Privileging the Oriental in Paco Bezerra's El señor Ye ama los dragones

Abstract

ABSTRACTPaco Bezerra's 2015 thriller-comedy El señor Ye ama los dragones destabilized the immigration narrative that often appears in Spanish theatre by creating a story in which Chinese immigrants are the focus, thus giving visibility and agency to a community that is little discussed in Spanish cultural production. Throughout his play, Bezerra inverts the common approach to immigration drama in which the Western is privileged in structure and in plot. Rather, in this play, the Oriental is privileged on a structural and narrative level, and the play concludes with the triumph of Xiaomei over her white Spanish counterparts. I propose that the Dantesque structuring of the play, the epistemological shift toward Chinese cultural norms, and the resolution of the play's mystery serve as a critique of the national narrative of multiculturalism and integration, which can be summed up in the common, yet ironic, Spanish phrase, “No somos racistas.”