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Mono Riojas Aguilar is a playwright, actor, producer, and professor of English at San Antonio College. The son of Chicano and Chicana activists, the bulk of his plays reveal and comment on the realities of the West Side of San Antonio, both positive and negative. His other major themes in non-barrio-related plays include faith and religion. His acting career began in 1983, and his playwriting and producing career started in 2014. He earned his MA in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997, his BA in English from Rice University in 1992, and he is a proud Vok, having graduated from Lanier high in 1988. His community involvement ranges from supporting the Cesar Chavez Foundation’s marches to donating to almost a dozen charitable organizations, including Bread and Blankets Mutual Aid, to competing for the San Patricios of the San Antonio Gaelic Athletic Club. His plays expressing the beautiful and harsh realities of San Antonio’s barrios have been performed for sellout audiences at San Antonio College, the Jump-Start Theatre, and the Guadalupe Theatre.
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Artist Statement of Work
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When audience members talk to me about my plays, I get either of two reactions: “That’s exactly what it was like!” or “That’s not what I lived”, and both are true, for my plays present the realities that many people in the barrios of San Antonio experience. The Chato’s Bridge trilogy: Chato’s Bridge, Adelita, and Hope and Camaradas, are set in the West Side of San Antonio in the late 20th century up to the present. They are gritty, raw, and truthful, but they are not universal. My padrino, who was a member of the Barrio Ghost Town gang and the Brown Berets, would say the plays are accurate. My mother, who grew up in the same neighborhood, never experienced anything like what I present in my plays, for she walked the straight and narrow line. I present authenticity and accuracy, for too many people, including younger Chicanos, think the Chicano movies of the 1980s, as full of stereotypes as they are, are indicative of life in San Antonio’s barrios, so I need to present reality in an entertaining yet realistic way. My protagonists are straight men who are gang members with good hearts, straight women who battle life as fiercely as they must, and gay men and trans boys who must literally fight to survive in the barrio. I do not write these characters for “inclusion” purposes or to expand the audience; I write them because they exist on the West Side, and their stories rival those told in Greek tragedies. I have half-joked for years that Lanier’s flag team could beat up the football teams of most high schools in the city, for I know how tough those girls and gay boys had to be in the 1980s, and I have seen how well they have managed to mature into women and men. My plays honor them. When my plays receive standing ovations from the audiences in the Guadalupe Theatre, I know I am accurately presenting their stories. When audience members yell, “Get up, guey!” at the villain of the play as he is finally facing his reckoning for all the evil he has unleashed, I know they truly, viscerally feel my play. When Jorge Pina, Theatre Director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, beams, “Chicano teatro is back at the Guadalupe!” after my play, I know I have a talent to share with the city. My plays make people proud to be from the West Side, all blemishes and blessings considered.