[1] Ruben Mendoza of Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura wrote that the play uses a communal third place (also known as a third space) to criticize "capitalist spatial practice".
[1] Moraga stated that the play is based "loosely on three actual events that took place in a central California coastal farmworker town by the same name.
"[4] These events were a 1985–1987 cannery strike, a 1989 7.1 Richter scale earthquake, and a vision of the Lady of Guadalupe in the Pinto Lake County park.
[1] As strategies the workers use a type of protest theater used by El Teatro Campesino and they also use hunger strikes in the manner done by César Chávez.
[1] During the play the politicians deliberate on Bill 1519, which is intended to separate the workers into legal residents and illegal immigrants as a way to divide them, referring to real-life border control legislation.