Ramona and the Ballad of Juan Diego

About

For the centennial of The Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, its lead actor Eli digs into the play’s fascinating history, which involves a murder, a crusading activist, DW Griffith, and the Cahuilla Band of Indians.

About two hours east of Los Angeles, thousands gather each spring in Hemet for The Ramona Pageant, the oldest continuously staged outdoor play in the United States. The production draws from Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, a cultural force that helped shape California’s identity and spotlighted injustices against Native Americans. Following the pageant’s centennial, the film tracks Eli Santana, who plays Alessandro, as he investigates the real history behind the fiction, including the 1880s killing of Juan Diego. In museum archives, the team discovers a rare wax cylinder that preserves the killer’s testimony. They seek out descendants of Juan Diego and his wife, Ramona Lubo, and record a new wax-cylinder statement to restore her missing voice. The journey culminates at the pageant, where descendants and Bird Singers gather, and Eli debuts The Ballad of Juan Diego, reframing a California myth for the next hundred years.