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The Radio Art Hour: Guillermo Gomez-Pena (Audio)

Dec 25, 2021
Produced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellows and Artistic Director Tom Roe.

This week we hear two works from Guillermo Gomez-Pena, from the New American Radio archives. "I Don't Speak English Only, Vato!" and "Menage Trade." "I Don't Speak English Only, Vato!" challenges the notion of English as the official language of the United States, in light of the growing population of Spanish speakers and the xenophobic backlash against bilingualism. Artists Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Sergio Arau, Yareli Arizmendi, Betto Arcos, and Ellen Klaver humorously criticize the easy "love for the exotic" tendencies of American society, and its rejection of otherness and complexity when it appears to threaten U.S. values and culture. On "Menage Trade" Gomez-Pena collaborates with radio journalist Betto Arcos and Yareli Arizmendi, Sergio Arau, Mireille Perron and others. An experimental multilingual radio program created in response to the increasing economic and cultural ties between Mexico, the United States and Canada in the wake of the North America Free Trade Agreement. Humorous, satirical and a critical exploration of culture, language, and nationality, it questions the real issues before us in NAFTA: cultural homogenization, economic dependency and human displacement.