SOURCE: An interview in American Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 10, January, 1988, pp. 15-21, 56-7.

In the following interview, Valdez discusses his career as a playwright and the roles of politics and mysticism in his work.

One month into the 1965 Delano grape strike, which solidified the power of the United Farm Workers, 23-year-old Luis Valdez met with a group of union volunteers and devised a short comic skit to help persuade reluctant workers to join the strike. He hung signs reading Huelgista (striker) on two men and Esquirol (scab) on a third. The two Huelgistas started yelling at the Esquirol and the audience laughed. Thus began Valdez's career as founder and director of El Teatro Campesino—a career that in the more than two decades since has thrust him to the forefront of the complex and politically charged Hispanic search for identity in the Anglo culture of the United States.

Riding...