Originally from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Dr. Tania Libertad Balderas is a Research Associate at the School for Advanced Research (SAR). She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of New Mexico, an MA in English Literature from l'Université de Lausanne, and a B.A. in Theater Arts from New Mexico State University. Her fields of study include 20th Century Comparative Literature, centering on Chicanx, Latin American, and Native American Literature and Theatre. She specializes in Marxism, feminism, theater studies, anti-imperialism, and decolonial theories.
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Her current book project, Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in Cold War US and Mexico, traces the interrelationship between the novels, autobiographies, theater plays, and oral histories that center the participation of women in the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Chicano/a Movement, and the “Dirty War” in Mexico. Her project emphasizes how these narratives articulate notions of decolonization, self-determination, women’s liberation, and the existence and significance of transnational solidarity networks established in their struggle for liberation.
Blood Wedding/Bodas de sangre El Paso Playhouse (Aug - Sept 2015)
Tania is an actress, director, dramaturg, and theater scholar. She has performed in various English and Spanish-language plays in Texas and New Mexico, including her roles as Lady Anne in Richard III, la Mujer de Leonardo in Bodas de Sangre, Callie in Stop, Kiss, and Edith in Ballerina.
She will play Megan Simmons in the Institute of American Indian Arts' production of Who is Azeban?, a new work by E. Salvador Chapman, directed by Jonah Winn-Lenetsky on January 26 & 27, 2026, at New Mexico Actors Lab.
She is currently in rehearsals for Esperanza at Santa Fe, NM's Teatro Paraguas, directed by Paola Vengoechea and Cristina Vigil in collaboration with Carlos Morton, a renowned Chicano playwright and Professor Emeritus of Theatre at UC Santa Barbara.
Esperanza is based on the 1954 blacklisted film Salt of the Earth, which detailed the 1951 miners' strike at the Empire Zinc Mine outside Silver City, New Mexico. Because the miners were forced by the Taft-Hartley Act to abandon the picket line, the miners' wives took over the protest, and the united community, led by the women, forced the company, through non-violent resistance, to relent and honor the miners' demands for better wages, housing, and working conditions. Performances will be in March 2026.
As part of her ongoing work with theater artists, her second book project, tentatively titled Theater at the Border: A Divided Dramaturgy of the Drug War Era Borderlands, examines how theatrical productions in the El Paso-Juárez borderlands reflect the different ways Fronterizxs (borderland subjects) have approached identity, citizenship, and resistance or complacency. During the height of the Drug War and mass femicides, Juárez theater company Telón de Arena staged plays that challenged the state authorities’ complicity in the hundreds of femicides targeting working-class women and girls. In Antígona: las voces que incendian el Desierto [The Voices That Set Fire to the Desert], written and directed by Perla de la Rosa, Sophocles’ heroine demands justice for her sister, who was brutally raped and murdered, her mutilated body discarded in the desert sands alongside hundreds of poor and working-class women. As the protagonist confronts King Creon, who blames women for their own murders, echoing the Governor’s claims, the Chorus reveals how the maquila industry and border militarization contribute to the sexual and gender violence inflicted on working-class women. On the U.S. side, the vibrant musical Viva! El Paso celebrates the mythology of “the Great American Southwest.” Set in a picturesque desert landscape, danzantes, singing conquistadors, and mariachis revel in the American Dream. These 1990s Fronterizx theatrical performances offer key insights into the subject formation of the US-Mexico borderlands. Through analysis of oral histories, scripts, and archival materials, I argue that the dichotomous Juarense and El Pasoan cultural productions during the Drug War reveal how violence and militarization have impacted the borderlands—fostering feminist resistance on one side while promoting American exceptionalism and assimilation on the other.
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