Summary
Heroes and Saints takes place in McLaughlin, California in 1988. McLaughlin is a fictional town in the real San Joaquin Valley, one of the most important agricultural regions in the United States. The town is surrounded by “an endless sea of agricultural fields” and divided by Highway 99. Most of the residents are Chicano farm workers who work in the fields or packing plants for industrial agricultural companies. The main characters in the play are first- and second-generation Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. for more opportunities.
A group of children enter a grape vineyard and as the sun rises they erect a child-size cross; on the cross is the small figure of a child. Cerezita Valle, the protagonist of the play, rolls out on her raite (a rolling, tablelike platform) and looks at the crucified child, transfixed. A wash of sunlight bathes both Cerezita and the dead child in light. The stage goes black.
Over the past few years, a disproportionate number of children in the community have died of cancer or been born with birth defects. In protest, anonymous people are taking the dead children and hanging their bodies on crosses in the middle of the grape vineyards. These acts gain media attention, and Ana Perez, a news reporter, comes to McLaughlin to cover the story. Ana Perez tries to interview Cerezita’s mother, Dolores, but Dolores runs into the house to avoid her. Amparo, a close family friend, begins to tell the reporter about Cerezita. Born nearly 18 years ago, Cerezita was born without a body because of the chemicals Dolores was exposed to while picking in the fields. Amparo explains that Cerezita was one of the first children whose birth and development were affected by the pesticides, but now there are many more. They named her Cerezita because she looks like a cherry: a round red face with no body. Ana Perez asks about the crucified child in the field, Meme Delgado. She’s appalled that someone would treat a child’s dead body that way, but Amparo defends the act, saying whoever did it is trying to raise awareness about the unjustified deaths of children in the town.
A week later, sisters Yolanda and Cerezita are talking in the Valle’s kitchen. Yolanda is breastfeeding her baby daughter Evalina. Watching her, Cerezita remembers breastfeeding as a baby and tasting fear for the first time in her mother’s sweat. It was bitter, and afterward, Cerezita refused to breastfeed. Yolanda is a hairdresser and begins to give Cerezita her weekly beauty treatment. Their brother Mario walks in; having just showered, he's dressed only in a towel. Complaining about the water, Mario tells them that one day he’s going to take the family away from this town. Yolanda and Mario talk about how contaminated the water is: whether bathing or drinking from the faucet, the chemicals get into their bodies. Dolores enters, complaining that Amparo spoke to the media last week about the health problems in the town. In retaliation, someone shot through Amparo’s window the previous night. Yolanda speculates that it was the men in helicopters who patrol the town and fields at night. In addition, people came to talk to Amparo at work, pressuring her to not speak out against the bosses and their company, Arrowhead.
Amparo enters with a priest named Father Juan Cunningham who is carrying a five-gallon jug of water. Seeing Father Juan, Dolores quickly hides Cerezita behind a curtain. Juan is half Mexican and half white. He eyes Mario, whose toned body is still half-clothed in a towel. Amparo shares that the agricultural company Arrowhead donated clean drinking water after the negative press attention last week. Amparo continues that the reporter wanted to interview Cerezita. Dismissively, Dolores wonders why, since Cerezita just looks out the window all day. Yolanda responds that Cerezita knows—that she sees. The scene shifts to Cerezita, who is hidden behind a curtain looking out the window. Next to her is Bonnie, a neighborhood child who Amparo and her husband Don Gilberto take care of. Bonnie is trying to cure her doll, who she says is sick. Cerezita looks out the window and comments to herself about how the sheep outside drink the same water the community does. The water is an orange-yellow color and the baby lambs are born “broken” like her. She watches them and feels the urge to weep.
Dolores and Juan are at the kitchen table. Dolores tells Juan how the chemicals used in the packing plants for almonds and other agricultural products make the workers sick. She does not want to work there, but with limited job opportunities, she feels forced to. Dolores thanks Juan for coming to visit them, remarking that most priests don’t visit people's homes unless they’re wealthy. Although Juan has been a priest for ten years, Dolores observes that he still has the eyes of a man. She says it’s good for a priest to experience a little of the world so that he understands his parishioners. Juan offers to hear Cerezita’s confession, but Dolores responds that her daughter is a saint and could not possibly have any sins. She adds that maybe they should even pray to her daughter.
Juan timidly enters the room where Cerezita is talking into a tape recorder about a man seeking out his lost purity in a woman. Cerezita is surprised that Dolores let someone see her in person. She tells Juan she has no use for God, and that he’s wasting his time with her. Reluctantly she lets him read her a passage from his book. The text speaks about how the rich man should care for and protect the poor because the rich benefit from the poor. Yet, it is only accompanied by a poor man that the rich can gain access to heaven. As Juan reads, Cerezita translates the text into Spanish, and at one point she turns to him and recites the rest of the passage from memory. Juan looks at her impressed, with a mix of awe and tenderness. Cerezita asks him, “Am I your pobre [poor person], Father?”
Analysis
The play is set in the farm town of McLaughlin, but Moraga’s notes on the setting make a point of distinguishing between land and dirt. Although McLaughlin is surrounded by miles of fields, the soil has been so overworked, and doused with such deadly chemicals, that it is no longer land, but dirt. Through this process, the land has become the community’s enemy and is literally killing them. However, Moraga writes, the people remember their connection to the land. The quotes in the preface of the play further hint at the connection between those who work the fields and the land, as well as foreshadowing that those facing injustice will one day rise up.
Moraga includes a note on Cerezita before the opening of the play. She describes Cerezita as a head “of human dimension” but possessing a dignity and indigenous beauty that can at times “assume nearly religious proportions.” Without a body, Cerezita’s mobility is limited. Throughout the play, the actress moves around the stage with an electric wheelchair (referred to as a raite in Moraga’s stage directions) which she can operate with her chin. Her raite is designed so that only the actress’s head is visible.
The first scene of the play is without dialogue. The image of a dead child on a cross in the middle of the grape vineyard introduces the themes of religion and environmental racism. Placing the child in the field directly links its death to the agricultural industry, and thus attempts to hold them responsible. The light that shines on the child’s silhouette adds further to its Christlike appearance.
Environmental racism is defined as ”the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards placed on people of color.” The high exposure to chemicals—in the water, in the pesticides Arrowhead sprays, and in the fields and packing plants—is creating severe health problems in the community. Young children are dying of cancer or developing problems in the womb, but the agricultural companies and the government still say there’s no proof that the problems are caused by agricultural chemicals. Desperate to get the world's attention, people have begun to stage symbolic crucifixions of the children who have died. Yet there is a clear difference between how this act is viewed from the outside versus inside the community. Ana Perez is shocked and appalled by these crucifixions—more, it would seem, than the actual fact that children are dying. The political act and its symbolism are lost on her.
From the beginning, the bosses of Arrowhead, or “the growers,” are introduced as an anonymous and omnipresent force in the life of the community. Neither the audience nor the characters ever meet any individuals; rather they are referred to as a collective group, a company. However, the helicopters that fly above the fields symbolize their power and control over the community. They send a clear message: the community is being watched. This point is emphasized when Amparo’s window gets shot in as a threat that anyone who speaks out against them will be punished. Arrowhead is the symbolic face of the agricultural industry in Heroes and Saints.
Dolores and Cerezita have a complex relationship. Dolores is a fearful woman, a fact Cerezita picked up on even as a baby when breastfeeding. Dolores hides Cerezita away from the public eye through a mix of fear, protectiveness, and shame. She keeps Cerezita in the house and literally hides her behind a curtain when visitors come to the house. Dolores simultaneously underestimates her daughter and reveres her. She cannot understand why a reporter would want to talk to Cerezita, but later says Cereztia is like a saint. From the beginning, it is made clear that there is something special about Cerezita. Yolanda recognizes this, observing that Cerezita is able to understand things about the world that other people cannot.
There are multiple moments of foreshadowing regarding Juan. Dolores’s comment that Juan still has “the eyes of a man” and the passage that Cerezita is recording when she meets Juan both speak to Juan’s struggles to live up to his vows and role as a priest. From the beginning, Cerezita and Juan connect. Juan is drawn to Cerezita’s intellect and vision. For Cerezita, who is so isolated, meeting Juan is a chance to expand her world.
Heroes and Saints is centered around a Chicano community. Characters in the play comfortably switch between English and Spanish, often within the same sentence. Moraga writes their English phonetically as it would be pronounced if someone was speaking with a Spanish accent. As immigrants, they are forced to adapt to another culture, country, and language. Moraga gives the audience a taste of what this feels like by forcing them to do the work of translating or making meaning rather than sacrificing the characters’ voices for the audience's comfort or understanding.
