Reflections on the Chilean Theatre

Extract

Generally, the person least equipped to talk about any Latin American cultural activity is a Latin American. Each of our countries is an isolated island arrogantly disparaging every other country. We are not a continent. We are an archipelago: nineteen cases of nationalism and of an astute reactionary politics which divides and exalts the small differences that separate us. Any Chilean or Argentine writer is perfectly familiar with the roster of productions in New York, Paris, and London. But he hasn't the slightest idea what has been written or staged in the last twenty years in Peru or Mexico. Any Latin American theatrical director receives publications in three languages, but if he wants to read a book on Colombian or Uruguayan theatre, it is likely that he can find it only in the library of a romance language department or theatre department of a university—in the U.S.