The immigrant's story is both particular and universal.

Whether we arrived in the United States 250 years ago or yesterday, whether we came by boat or by train or plane or on foot, whether we made the journey in hope or in despair, those who choose to become Americans straddle cultures, feeling the promise of the new and the tugging familiarity of the old.

By the Hand of the Father, a music-theater piece presented Wednesday in the Broward Center's Amaturo Theater as part of the 18th International Hispanic Theatre Festival, embraces both the joy and pain of that transformative journey, in this case from the perspective of Mexican-American men.

Written by Theresa Chávez, Eric Gutiérrez and Rose Portillo, with original music by Alejandro Escovedo, the piece mixes English and Spanish in an amalgam of theater and concert. A seven-piece band plays the buoyant Tejano music, mostly sung by both Rosie Flores and award-winning vocalist/bandleader Ruben ''El Gato Negro'' Ramos. Actor-author Portillo and Kevin Sifuentes perform the poetic, dramatic, funny spoken passages, as images of long-ago immigrants ratchet up the emotion of the stories.

Some of those tales are harrowing: A father digs a grave for his 2-year-old son in Mexico, pretending the child has died, then the boy's mother hides him under her coat, smuggling him into a country that would otherwise turn them away because tiny Manuel was just recovering from smallpox. A woman remembers her father's drunken rages, and the one time that he confided its source: ``Well, you know, they all think I'm some dumb Mexican.''

Other stories are tender, as when an old man caring for a wife untethered from her memories recalls their long, eventful life together. Romance, marriage, children; sharing and secrets; achievements and regrets: That's the richness of lives shared in By the Hand of the Father, gone too soon from a festival that celebrates the connective power of culture.

The Miami Herald
Junio 2003