Mexicano Flores

Mexicano Flores is a musical about the real-life trial and execution of Miguel Ángel Flores, an undocumented Mexican in Texas, who murders Angela, a US citizen. Both the victim and perpetrator aspired to be singers, but ended up bloodied in a car after a deplorable femicide. The musical also reflects on the 2000 US presidential elections, which coincided with the vote that sealed Miguel’s execution. Influenced by both Brecht and Broadway, Mexicano Flores features a traditional Mexican lullaby and nine original songs by Lorena Oliva and Claudia Romero Herrera, orchestrated in the 1980s and 1990s style to orient ourselves in time and to contrast the play’s dense content. From its conception, Mexicano Flores envisioned a farcical but intimate and reflexive atmosphere, as an alternative to the conventional musical that bases its appeal on the lavishness of the production and choreography. Mexicano Flores argues that no murder can be the solution to a problem, neither the one that takes place in the darkness of anonymity nor the one that occurs under the intense light of legality. In this fragment of Mexicano Flores, a clownish representative of the Mexican government begs for mercy to a George W. Bush who is only interested in becoming President-elect, and who ultimately proceeds with Flores’ execution. Flores bids farewell to his family and has a last imaginary encounter with Angela. He sings a repentance song to silence Angela’s voice in his head, and is afterwards transported by the chorus to the first encounters with her, back in 1989, to discover his real motivations to carry out the femicide.