Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Requiem for a Broken America

Portrait of Guillermo Gómez-Peña — Guillermo Gómez-Peña, courtesy of the artist.

A man sits upright at a table wearing a black hat, sunglasses, and an open black jacket with yellow shoulder pads exposing his chest with tattoos. A stack of white paper sits on the table along with a vase of flowers, an intricate ash tray with skulls, candles, and a plastic alien head labelled with the text “Alien Pops.” The room is red behind the seated figure, with artworks, photographs and carved items decorating the walls. A prominent neon sign that reads "La Nostalgia BAR” sits above the seated person.

The series Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art and Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border is a multi-lingual live radio and archived audio program by performance artist, writer, activist, and MacArthur fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña addressing the multiple pandemics of racism, sexism, militarism, and colonialism.

Requiem for a Broken America features a powerful and poignant playlist of curated songs and new spoken word poetry by Gómez-Peña in direct response to relentless daily incidents of police brutality involving Brown and Black bodies in the U.S. including police and white supremacist violence and Latinx and Indigenous Americans.

Produced by Charly García and Stephanie Manriquez.

Presented in partnership between Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Public Media institute, and the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. The series is an initiative of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40.

Smart Museum of Art

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art and Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border

Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Public Media Institute