Zozobra burns once a year at the Fiestas de Santa Fe, in September. He was created in 1924 by William Howard Shuster. Shuster founded a tradition in which the effigy is burned as a symbol of relieving the community of its frustration, worry, and distress, which all denote the concept of "zozobra" in the Spanish language.
My words and their visual accompaniment present the Zozobra that lives for 364 days of the year. He is angry as a requisite. He is revealed to be more than anger in the final scene, where he offers tobacco to the sky, respecting the traditions of the land where he is but a new face for five-hundred years of colonization parading as native New Mexican tradition.
This piece is a meditation on movement without time. The red eye perceives beyond the anger, but the brain behind it, only through it. Zozobra finds company in a mass of his persecutors. He remembers that if you only must burn once a year, you do not have to live in anguish, even if it’s your given name.
Rodeyo
