SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Monday,November 13, 1995 Theater Review By Anne Marie Welsh Arts Critic

During the first few sections of his "We Are Patriots with Dark Faces," Jose Torres Tama seemed to be Guillermo Gomez-Pena reincarnated.

The New Orleans-based performance artist shares the furry voice, the Spanglish witticisms, the insinuating delivery of Gomez-Pena, who got his start here 12 years ago and since has moved from Tijuana-San Diego border-bridging to wide fame as a mock-heroic warrior for what he calls "gringostroika."

In his own way, Torres Tama,who was born in Ecuador, is also a warrior for :gringostroika," the economic restructuring of gringoland.

"We Are Patriots with Dark Faces" parallels Latino male rituals with Anglo corporate ritual: Street violence serves the identity needs of poor Latinos, just as false advertising serves the Ango creed of greed.

Maybe we should be worrying about corporate gangs as much as about urban thugs, the piece suggests - and with good reason.

Presented at Centro Cultural de la Raza over the weekend, "Patriots" is a collage of nine monologues, some preachy, some funny, some scary.

Torres Tama's writing changes tome quickly and often juxtaposes contraries. One of the best pieces is dead-on serious, "We are Without Fathers." Torres Tama accompanies his slow-motion hip-hop poem with rhythm sticks, repeating the central idea that too many Latino boys are without models, "orphans on the bridge of manhood."

He describes one horrific scene over and over: a proud father blowing the brains out of his daughter's boyfriend because the guy is from the wrong country, the wrong color. The performance here became incantatory.

Less strong was "Homeys, Frat Boys, and Corporate Gangs" because it stayed preachy and abstract, rather than vivid and particular. A section about the future had a lot of funny moments (most of them one-liners) amid the silly ones ("To beer or not to beer, What is the question?")

The pace slackened, the material droned, then picked up again toward the end in "General Absolution," a comic monologue about a Catholic priest's efficient way of forgiving the whole congregation without having to hear personal confessions. Early on, torres Tama got in a couple of good jabs at the upcoming Republican National Convention. He warned the city to prepare to be served up like some exotic flan, here,in this place "So far from God, yet so close (to) Tijuana."

Torres Tama moves gracefully and rhythmically through his one-hour show, varying the presentation with props and musical accompaniment, masks and dance movement that often turns self-consciously sexy as he swivels his mambo hips.

The finale cleverly reprises themes from the opening.

A litany of advertising slogans sounds sinister when intoned as threats by Torres Tama. The homey he plays on-stage is just doing "what we do best to get a piece of the rock." The implication: for many men, the only way to get a share of the crumbling American dream is to pick up a gun and steal it.