It is impossible to overstate the significance of what ownership means to an organization that is indigenous to the land upon which it stands. Ownership represents independence, stability, the potential for healing old cultural wounds – and at least one other essential thing.

“With land ownership comes power – and a voice,” said Jesse Ogas, a longtime member of Denver’s Su Teatro, a homegrown Denver theater company born 50 years ago out of the Chicano civil-rights movement. “You look at how fascism is rearing its ugly head all over our country. The only way to prevent that is to make sure that we hold onto what is ours and we don’t ever let it go.”

On Jan. 26, dozens of supporters of the nation’s now third-oldest Chicano theater company cheered, sang and toasted the ceremonial burning of the mortgage on the former Denver Civic Theatre, its home at 721 Santa Fe Drive since 2010.

What a far cry this scene was from May 2002, when about 30 Su Teatro picketers dressed as skeletons silently and sullenly walked the sidewalk in front of the Civic at its reopening as a for-profit theater under the management of a notoriously controversial Broadway producer. It was the final nail in the coffin of a seven-month-old protest of the takeover by New York-based Sibling Entertainment.

But in early 2010, at the depth of the housing crisis, Sibling fell behind on its mortgage, Evergreen National Bank quickly foreclosed and then-Mayor John Hickenlooper helped broker a deal to buy the building for the city, which then extended a bridge loan that allowed Su Teatro to take occupancy. Hickenlooper even put up $50,000 of his own money.

“You and I have not been subjected to the racism that someone like (Executive Artistic Director) Tony Garcia has endured for 50 years,” Hickenlooper told me at the time. “At every opportunity, I will remain his champion.”

I remember quoting one insider at the time who called the Civic, under Sibling control, “the black hole of death for theaters.”

It’s amazing what a little time and a lot of sage can do.

Su Teatro, born out of protest and activism in 1971, grew from the displacement of Westside Denverites to make way for construction of the Auraria Campus. The company has been telling stories of the Chicano, Hispanic and Latino experience ever since.

In that time, Garcia has moved Su Teatro from the cultural margin to the mainstream. The company has presented 150 stage plays, many written by Garcia and composer Daniel Valdez, as well as concerts, poetry, dance, films and educational programs.

In English, Su Teatro means “Your Theater.” Now, it even more literally belongs to the community it serves.

“Land ownership means there will always be a place where our community and our culture will be represented,” said Bobby LeFebre, a 21-year Su Teatro company member and Colorado’s Poet Laureate from 2019-23. “It means that we will have control over what happens to us, and to our stories in this space.”

At the mortgage-burning, attendees were invited to write down anything they wanted to be rid of on a small piece of paper and drop it into a portable barbecue pit. As he added his paper to the flames, Garcia reflected on the significance of the moment.  “This really puts us in a position to start thinking about the future,” he said. “Today is about closing one book – and opening a new one.”

That book opened wide in 2023, a year marked with some subtle shifts in direction. Garcia is finishing his 51st year with the company, while his daughter, longtime Managing Director Mica Garcia de Benavidez, directed her first mainstage production. Her critically acclaimed “The Wolf at the Door,” a mashup of Grimm Brothers and Aztec mythology, offered both a chilling metaphor for systemic, generational domestic violence, and a restorative testament to the power of women to band together and overcome.

After watching de Benavidez quietly and consistently fire the engine behind the scenes at Su Teatro over the course of her adult lifetime, it was a thrill to see her take center stage as a director.

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 23rd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.