This dissertation documents, describes, and analyzes the emergence and elaboration of cultural expressions produced by the comedy troupe Chicano Secret Service (CSS) from 1988 to the present. As part of the Chicana/o Radical Performance Tradition, the performances of CSS imagined and created a culture of liberation and emancipation through Chicana/o political satire.

The sketch comedy troupe's response to the neoliberal racial capitalist moment of the late 1980s to the present articulated what I describe as "Oppositional Performance." This dissertation argues that instances of opposition performance emanate from within the contested historical context between the dominant neoliberal bloc and the emergent Chicana/o art performance bloc. Utilizing the interdisciplinary research methods of Chicana/o Cultural Studies and incorporating performance studies, media studies, history, and sociology, this dissertation interrogates the socio-historical significance of Chicano Secret Service and Chicana/o cultural production.

This dissertation also serves as a CSS archive. Interviews were conducted with all the members of CSS: Elias Serna, Susan Carrasco, Eduardo Lopez. As a scholar/activist/ and member of CSS I have utilized an observant participant method to conduct a critical oral history of CSS. I also conducted interviews with people that played a large role in assisting CSS to become an avant-garde comedy troupe, such as Luis Valdez, Rene Yanez, Tiffany Ann Lopez, Kinan Valdez, Laura Perez and Diane Gamboa. I also collected and analyzed CSS films and performance videos, along with a collection of newspaper articles, unpublished scripts, posters, performance programs and original story boards.

My cultural-historical analysis links the practices of CSS to the Chicana/o power movement renaissance art movement and to the Chicana/o avant-garde. Grounded in this Chicana/o Radical Performance Tradition, CSS expresses the collective response of the Chicana/o working classes in Southern California in a neoliberal historical context. I analyze four landmark actos/sketches and three multimedia performances to demonstrate how Chicana/o expressive cultures can subvert hegemony in ephemeral yet unpredictably enduring terms. The oppositional performances produced by CSS resonate within the Chicana/o Radical Performance Tradition that simultaneously critiques cultural domination and turns hegemony on its head.

Drawing on oppositional performances and the Chicana/o Radical Performance Tradition as a framework, I argue that Chicano Secret Service's work exhibits the tenets expressed within the Radical Chicana/o Tradition in a more general manner. Although such performances illuminate the life world of the individuals within CSS, the collaborative relations between different bodies, memories, and communities within enacted performance spaces intertwine to produce a collective Chicana/o performance and social power. This dissertation argues that such performances are mestizo rhetorics, new inventions of Western and indigenous cultures that create forms of Chicana/o knowledge.