Chaitén La Pompeya (2015) de María Paz González: absurdo, desastre socionatural y neoliberalismo en Chile

• Carvajal, Gustavo

• Teatro Chileno

This article examines the strategies employed in the play Chaitén La Pompeya (2015) by actress and playwright María Paz González to dramatize a critical performance of the May 2, 2008, eruption of the Chaitén volcano and the ensuing catastrophe for the affected communities. Specifically, it analyzes the use of the absurd as a historical genre and literary aesthetic to dramatize the inertia, isolation, and historical oblivion experienced by the surviving inhabitants in an area affected by centralist demands, power devices, and control under the dominant neoliberal market regime in Chile. Finally, this study aims to place Chaitén La Pompeya within a broader group of contemporary Chilean playwrights and collectives that have developed artistic projects critical of the economic and political ideology imposed in Chile since the last decade of the civic-military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989).