One of the most common critical complaints about Detained in the Desert is that the playwright, Josefina Lopez, makes things too easy by creating villains that are one-dimensional and easy to hate, thereby engendering an unfair sympathy for those characters on her side of the issue of immigration. This is actually a rather facile interpretation of the text that conveniently overlooks some important aspects.
The most obvious flaw in this line of reasoning is that not only are the characters on her side of the issue more sympathetic, but they are at least equally one-dimensional. Ernesto, the “earnest” immigrant-rights activist only barely falls short of qualifying for sainthood. Ernesto is, actually, even more one-dimensional than bloviating right-wing radio talk show host Lou Becker. Becker, who makes his living spouting racist tropes that acts as red meat to his true believer listeners, is not even a native-born American, making the title of his radio show more than a little ironic: “Take Back America.” He also turns out not even to be a true believer himself; he just fell into the job of racist messenger because he failed at everything else he ever tried. A fact which makes his redemptive transformation at the end all more believable and authentic. Ernesto, by contrast, reveals no such complexity of shading.
The use of one-dimensional stereotyping is also not a flaw because it acts as a thematic exploration of systemic abuse. Both the cop who abuses his power, oversteps his authority and becomes emblematic of racial profiling and the filmmaker shooting a documentary about Ernesto are clearly not the type of complex individuals usually referred to as “round” characters. They are flatter than flat, given no substance of personality other than as iconic examples of what they represent: the agency of conflict in the cop and the agency of exploitation of conflict in the filmmaker. The cop represents law enforcement as a system where racism is pervasive while the documentarian is the stand-in for all media that actively seeks out dramatic confrontation to point a camera at and shoot.
Ultimately, the dramatic power of Detained in the Desert rests firmly upon its stereotypes and one-dimensional portrayals because it is propaganda. At no point and in no way does the narrative even an effort to present itself as a rational, logical, fact-based debate over two opposing sides of a single issue. The issue here is the racist underpinning of the immigration issue when the migrancy is coming from the south. The north is given a free ride both in the stories of Lou Becker and Sandi’s Canadian boyfriend who came into the country illegally.
Immigration is not the issue at hand. Illegal immigration is not the issue at hand. Racism is what this story is about and racism does not have two logical sides over which a fact-based debate can be held. Thus stripped of the need of even the pretense that there is a debate to had, the point of the play is to prove there is just one side to this issue worth considering. That so many millions continue to act as though there are two sides is exactly why characters have been stripped of complexity. Those who get it don’t need the complexity and those who don’t get it won’t understand the complexity.
