• Submitted by: Luis Manuel Mazorra
• Culture and Traditions
• 02 / 20 / 2012

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The children's theater company La Colmenita, Cuba, has been the inspiration for a similar one in the Chiapas state of Mexico, a fact which fulfills the ideal of expanding the Cuban experience. The company opened in the southern state with the book The Cockroach Martina.
The birth of this project is a beautiful complicity, said the actor and instructor Luciano Burgos, in a telephone interview with Prensa Latina from the Chiapas city of San Cristobal.

Is the idea of ​​people who have always tried to unite and be supportive points and was so with all the momentum and enthusiasm of "Tim" (Carlos Alberto Cremata) was born The Colmenita of Chiapas.

The proposal to finalize the project fell FOMMA, a community center and theater group formed by Mayan women, who do a wonderful job, he said. The plan was to work with disadvantaged children in the continent.

I ran into a harsh reality, as do children of two and three years working in the street barefoot in the rain is so painful it hurts the heart he said Burgos.

The 1994 uprising and the action of the EZLN (Zapatista Army) returned to the lost dignity of these communities. Until 1994 when an Indian was in the same sidewalk as a "white" should go down the road, he said.

San Cristobal stated that marginalization is enormous. FOMMA works largely with women, youth and children of indigenous peoples and teaches literacy in mainstream leagues in the region are the Tzotzil and Tzeltal.

In this context, he added, the challenge was to create a Colmenita huge, but everything went great and in September after a month of hard work we carry out most of the assembly of the cockroach Martina and returned to Argentina.

It was now, after my new trip to Chiapas, which form the finished work and premiered in FOMMA with impressive success, primarily to see the dignity of these children, their happiness and commitment to work, he said.

And said that they are prepared to create a "Red" Colmenita will be extended to Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Will be "The Peoples Honeyhives originating" he said.

The meeting of Luciano and his wife Carolina and The Beehive was born in 2009, "when we travel to Havana to teach courses to children Mask," recalled the Argentine creator.

But then decided it was in the Caribbean island where they wanted to live and "leave Portugal after nine years of living there. Our children Frederick (part of The Beehive) and Eva were born in that country."

Today the family lives in Buenos Aires, and Luciano makes several trips to Chiapas to give continuity to the project.

The Cuban children's company was founded in 1990, since then, led by Carlos Alberto Cremata. In 2007 it was declared a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF).

It also has increased in countries like Venezuela, Spain, Colombia and Dominican Republic.

Luciano filed a lover of the island and its Revolution. "In Cuba do not happen to a two or three years working on the street, barefoot and malnourished, but that does not appear in major newspapers," he said.