Cartographies of the Border

Theatricalities of Emergency, Care and the Production of the Commons in Tamaulipas

Abstract

This article revisits my research on Emergency Theatre in Tamaulipas through the category of the border, understood not merely as a geographical boundary but as an expanded condition that traverses bodies, affective relations, uses of space, and forms of social interaction. Drawing on situated cartographic research conducted in Tamaulipas in 2017, I argue that the theatricalities developed by Teatro para el Fin del Mundo, DOSCE La Compañía, Gato Negro Teatro, and Colectivo Trueque do not merely represent violence, but actively intervene in it through practices of spatial reappropriation, care, the reorganization of conviviality, and the ephemeral production of the common. The analysis of these experiences shows how theatricality enables the occupation of ruins, resists forms of self-imposed confinement, opens spaces for vulnerable children, and sustains minimal infrastructures of encounter where violence has profoundly damaged communal life. From this perspective, Emergency Theatre is understood as a constellation of situated practices that, without denying devastation or promising full reparation, challenge the border logic of separation and rehearse precarious yet persistent forms of presence, care, and community. The article thus argues that these theatricalities operate as affective counter-geographies that reopen, from within the territorial wounding itself, the question of the common in contexts of devastation.