I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in the power of divine forces that ensure even the smallest acts of resistance appear in the right places at the right times. The year is 2024 and Matthew Barbot’s The Beautiful Land I Seek (La Linda Tierra que Busco Yo) — a play about vigilantes — is more relevant than ever.  The production’s first preview serendipitously aligned on the day and only a few blocks away from the murder of a CEO who led one of the largest healthcare companies in the country. This shocking act coincides with the same year that saw two assassination attempts on Donald Trump’s life, two months apart. Yet unlike the explosion of media coverage that has divided our nation, making us question where the line is drawn between justice and terrorism, Barbot’s edifying play sheds light on a lesser-known assassination attempt on President Harry S. Truman’s life in 1950, forcing us to reckon with the moral and societal questions of how much taking someone’s life costs and if it’s valuable enough to invest in as a reparation for the murder of the Puerto Rican people and their independence.

It’s haunting to think about how the vast landscape of Puerto Rican history has been fragmented into tiny pieces—it’s easier to hide the truth that way. Yet, Barbot’s passion for surfacing uncomfortable truths about the beautiful land he honors is evident in the buffet of history he collected to serve audiences. His play journeys across states where real-life historical figures Oscar Collazo (Alejandro Hernández) and Griselio Torresola (Bobby Román) are stuck on a crazy train, going off the rails of vengeance and onto a path of evaluating the meaning of valor. The men are joined by key figures who have shaped Puerto Rico’s history, representation, and ever-evolving disenfranchisement (all embodied by Daniel Colón and Ashley Marie Ortiz). Barbot’s passion is further brought to life when a playwright character who carries his likeness (Nate Betancourt) meets Oscar and Gris after realizing he’s been on the wrong train. By raising the ghosts of everyone from the ever-entitled Christopher Columbus to the ever-revered Maria Vasquez from West Side Story (in brown face no less), Barbot takes a jarring approach to emphasize the absurdities and tone-deaf nature that has infested the minds and media of Americans and Boricuas alike. He even goes as far as poking fun at Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, highlighting the disconnect between the acts of pride we revere Boricua figures for and the ones, like Oscar and Gris, that we have left by the wayside.

But perhaps that is a betrayal that is mostly true for many Millennials and Gen-Zers, who with the exception of algorithmic encounters, may not engage sources that dig deeper into Puerto Rico’s fight for liberation, much less understand its history at all. Plot aside, I was watching the deep resonance the play had with Puerto Rican Gen X and Boomers in the audience. Tears rolled down the faces of elders who lived through many of the turning points as they sang along to songs about Puerto Rico’s freedom. Audible “mhmms” and head nods made it clear how much the piece resonated with the generations that have been around long enough to live histories that have been buried and covered up with empty gestures meant to pacify those of us who can be fooled into rewritten histories that desensitize us from harmful repetitive cycles. The uncomfortable laughter that erupted as we watched Columbus plead for help as rolls of paper towels were thrown to his rescue and the chilling silence when Truman himself laughed in the face of his perpetrators over the course of the play really drove a point home to me; my community has been in a perpetual state of mourning for centuries with no regard for our pain.

Whichever divine forces were at play when they arranged the timeline of this show’s premiere knew what they were doing. While Barbot’s work ultimately left me with more questions than answers—an invitation for more research and immersion into the heritage we claim—it also served as a reminder of the kind of theatrical medicine needed as we face the dawning of Aquarius. Can we continue to take the postures of victims every time we want to pass the blame onto the past when stories like these reveal our insufficient urgency? In this social climate, what keeps us audience members from storming the streets of Times Square right after the show, along with Elmo and friends, anti-genocide protestors, and street vendors working their asses off for a little recognition and dignity? I contemplated this on my walk to the train home, back to the Bronx, the birthplace of rich Nuyorican resistance, like when the Young Lords took over Lincoln Hospital in 1970. Given the violence we collectively experience (in nuanced ways), what will it take to get us to disengage distractions and pacifications in exchange for true freedom?

I mourned with Oscar and Gris as we reflected on how far gone the possibility of independence has felt for generations. What is the original sin that Puerto Rico and other colonies, or formerly colonized spaces, are still paying for? Why are acts of defiance, violent or peaceful alike, flying over the heads of the audiences that these gestures aspire to move into action? Is there an action or expression that could quell the hurt and betrayal bestowed upon la isla del encanto? Will Lin-Manuel’s witty raps be enough to avenge us all? Even a characterized version of John Wilkes-Booth chimes in to share his expertise in executing elected officials reminding us that while it may be human nature to revel in the power of taking a life that is taking something precious away from you, the ecstasy of the moment is short-lived and easily forgotten, rendering the inevitable accountability or death worthless. Cycles of injustice, loops of inadequate acts of change, and cries for change into the void that is colonization are all reminders that blips of bliss bolster ignorance.

In the end, we are still worthy of the medicine that is laughter. And laugh the audience and I cathartically did with Oscar and Gris as we quietly thought “fucking Gringos.” I looked out into the audience at the gringos joining in on that medicine while rolling my eyes, specifically at the white “Latinos”, who were feeling mighty affirmed by the show. Still, before my panties were too bunched, Barbot smoothly knocked them off of a pedestal by revealing another silenced history tethered to the profound pride of Puerto Rico; Flamboyan, the beloved tree loved only second to the coqui, are not native to Puerto Rico, they originated from Madagascar. Miss me with the not-so-subtle erasure of our African ancestors, which came up in conversation as my father, born in the Dominican Republic but raised in Luquillo for much of his life, shared his excitement to hear that Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola were at the center of this play.

“You know, my mother was Oscar’s nurse in his later years back in Puerto Rico. They became friends. I have a picture of him holding his dog,” he chuckled. I did not know any of that and wouldn’t have if the play didn’t catalyze the moment; this is why representation matters. He went on to say how he learned most of Oscar and Griselio’s story in an African American studies class (taught by a former Black Panther) when he decided to go back to college in the early 2000s. He learned a lot about the African Diaspora and parts of Puerto Rican history that are buried even deeper than what Barbot explores in the play. I don’t take issue with it, it just means someone has to tell that part of the history their own way, much like the existence of theaters like Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (PRTT) which has held a lot of space for truth and nuanced history in what was once a firehouse in Hell’s Kitchen. Theater makers like those who came together to tell this story are firefighters; the world seems up in flames and we all need to pour into wells of knowledge while we still can. Perhaps then we would have collected enough to water powerful, preferably peaceful, change. The divine time is now.

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The Beautiful Land I Seek (La Linda Tierra que Busco Yo) is running now at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.