Cherrie Moraga’s short play Heroes and Saints addresses the difficult lifestyle of Latino/a farm workers in California. Throughout the play there is a strong correlation with the exposure of toxic chemicals and the negative health conditions people develop. Although Moraga’s play is set up as fictional, its focus on dangerous environmental toxins is very real and necessary to raising social consciousness. Moraga presents environment toxins as extremely hazardous because she wants people to acknowledge the harm these products have on certain groups. People who pick crops are of great importance, yet they are suffering from illnesses, and social and political inequalities. Moraga exaggerates Cerezita’s condition of literally looking like a red round cherry because she wants to grab her audience attention. She wants people to realize that there are equity issues affecting farmworkers at a disproportional rate. The emotional deaths of all the children in the play are a call to action that the government needs to step in and help all those who are in need.
The first element of toxicity Moraga uses is the awakening to the reality of contamination. Before the play begins the reader is introduced to the setting of the play. The reader is informed that…show more content… Moraga uses a dark narrative in order to present the rapid spread of diseases and death. Don Gilberto states that he could not have children due to biological reasons (121). By including Don Gilberto’s sterility, Moraga implies that there is no way to reproduce. The lack of children are especially targeted in Moraga’s play in order to illustrate a horrific world where new life is impossible. Even if children are born they are not strong enough to survive. The death of baby Lina is meant to display sorrow and helplessness, while Cerezita’s deform body is supposed to invoke horror and
