Lucía Méndez and the Peace in Lebanon
Tú o Nadie (You or No One) was the first Mexican telenovela to air in Lebanon, in 1992, shortly after the Ta’if agreement that ended the Civil War was signed. Actress Lucía Méndez was the beautiful and sensational Raquel, in front of whom all froze in appreciation and sublimation. She was dubbed; the lips swayed in silenced Spanish while the voice we heard imposed itself in the official written Arabic language. We never heard her voice.
This work fancies a connection between the Ta’if as a dub to the Civil War, and between Lucía Méndez as a representation and extension of the post-war Ta’ifization of cultural production. The video sets out to create dystopic advertisement-like videos where the protagonist is reading in Arabic—in a robotic detached manner in a language foreign to her—principles from the Ta’if. The actual shoot added to the complexity of the initial idea, nurturing a set-up for an unscripted encounter: between the dub and the dubbed, between a now-forgotten telenovela actress and an aspiring artist, and between the seeming triviality of telenovelas vis-à-vis the war and a yearning for Lucía Méndez as a figure who “united” the warring factions.