O By Nick Mueller

n a stage containing little more than the outline of a rust-colored house, the lives of a Hispanic family living in Minneapolis unfold.

With a couple of magic words, a trunk containing the eldest family member’s legacy is opened, unlocking stories of life, love and labor as an immigrant from Mexico.

“Minnecanos,” a production of the Minneapolis-based Mixed Blood Theatre, played to a delighted crowd Monday night at the St. Paul Student Center. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the University’s forum committee of the Student Activities Office hosted the production to celebrate Mexican-American culture.

Joe Minjares was inspired to write the play to turn his personal experiences as a child growing up on Minneapolis’ north side into a story he could share with the greater Minnesota community.

Born in 1946, Minjares said he always felt invisible while growing up. He knew he was supposed to be proud of his culture, but he didn’t know why.

“It didn’t matter to anyone that I was Mexican-American,” he said.

To help today’s Hispanic youth better understand their cultural roots, Minjares enlisted the help of Thomas Benitez. Together they created “Minnecanos” – a word for Hispanics living in Minneapolis – to present a different view of the Hispanic movement.

The play is only 45 minutes long, but it addresses major milestones in Hispanic history, including El Rencanche, the train that shuttled laborers from the Southwest to Minnesota’s sugar beet fields, the mass deportation of the Great Depression and the Cesar Chavez-led farm workers movement.

The play opens on a hot day when, instead of going to the lake, a Hispanic teenager is forced to help his great-grandfather sort through a chest of junk. While at first reluctant to spend the day with an aging relative, the young man learns to embrace the past and discovers that although he is American, he is also Mexican and should always be aware of that.

Minjares said he hopes “Minnecanos” will inspire people to ask their grandparents and parents about their own personal history and heritage.

“The number of ethnic backgrounds is what makes our culture so rich,” he said.

For nine years, “Minnecanos” has been performed throughout the upper Midwest. Originally written for a grade school audience, the college crowd has embraced the story warmly, said director Raul Ramos.

Drake University, the University of Nebraska-Omaha and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have all housed performances recently, he said.

Mixed Blood Theatre tours the play every year in October. The theater also performs select performances in Spanish.