Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Hard

PT139 S2 P3 Q19 Explanation

The Birth of Chicano Theater

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsInferenceHumanities

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Passage

Most scholars of Mexican American history mark César Chávez’s unionizing efforts among Mexican and Mexican American farm laborers in California as the beginning of Chicano political activism in the 1960s. By 1965, Chávez’s United Farm Workers Union gained international recognition by initiating a worldwide boycott of grapes in an effort to get having initiated the Chicano theater movement, a movement that would reach its apex in the 1970s.

In the fall of 1965, Valdez gathered a group of striking farm workers and asked them to talk about their working conditions. A former farm worker himself, Valdez was no stranger to the players in the daily drama that was fieldwork. He asked people to illustrate what happened on the picket lines, audience to social action. Because actos were based on participants’ personal experiences, they had palpable immediacy.

In her book El Teatro Campesino, Yolanda Broyles-González rightly criticizes theater historians for having tended to credit Valdez individually with inventing actos as a genre, as if the striking farm workers’ improvisational talent had depended entirely on his vision and expertise for the form it took. She traces especially the actos’ connections in the European tradition of Valdez’s academic training, but a distinctive genre with connections to both.

What this question is testing

Inference

Anticipate

This is an Inference question. I need to find a statement the passage strongly supports about the Teatro Campesino. The clearest support comes from the timing.

The UFW had already gained international recognition through the grape boycott by 1965. The Teatro began in fall 1965 when Valdez gathered the striking farm workers. So the Teatro wasn't around — or at least wasn't doing theater work — during the union's earliest push for international recognition. That means the Teatro didn't play a major role in those early efforts.

Goal

Find the answer about the Teatro not contributing to the UFW's earliest international-recognition efforts. Common traps:

Answers about acceptance from farm owners — passage doesn't address this

Answers about specific Teatro members' San Francisco Mime Troupe backgrounds — only Valdez is mentioned in that connection

Answers about performance languages — passage doesn't specify

Answers about Mexican-critic praise — not in the passage

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The question
19.

The information in the passage most strongly supports which one of the following statements regarding

Answer choices

  1. Out of Scope9% picked this

    Its efforts to organize farm workers eventually won the acceptance of a few farm

    The passage doesn't discuss whether farm owners came to accept the Teatro's organizing efforts. Owners are mentioned in P1 (the boycott pressured growers to sign union contracts) but not in connection with Teatro acceptance.

  2. Out of Scope11% picked this

    It included among its members a number of individuals who, like Valdez, had previously belonged to the

    The passage mentions Valdez's San Francisco Mime Troupe background as one influence on the actos' form, but doesn't say other Teatro members had that same background. The actos' connections to the Mime Troupe are traced through Valdez's history, not through other members.

  3. Correct61% picked this

    It did not play a major role in the earliest efforts of the United Farm Workers Union

    Why this is right

    The passage establishes that the UFW had "gained international recognition" through the grape boycott "by 1965," and that 1965 was the year Valdez approached Chávez about using theater. So the union's earliest international-recognition efforts (the boycott) were already underway and successful before the Teatro's theatrical work began. The Teatro therefore didn't play a major role in those earliest efforts.

    Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  4. Out of Scope2% picked this

    Although its first performances were entirely in Spanish, it eventually gave some performances partially in English, for the

    The passage doesn't specify what languages performances were given in. There's no mention of Spanish-only first performances or later English partial performances.

  5. Out of Scope16% picked this

    Its work drew praise not only from critics in the United States but from critics

    The passage doesn't discuss critical reception in Mexico. The corrective view from Broyles-González traces influences to Mexican carpas, but that's about cultural lineage, not about Mexican critics praising the work.

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