Chile Con Carne and Other Early Works

Three early plays from influential Canadian Latina playwright, Carmen Aguirre. The plays, Chile Con Carne, ¿QUE PASA with LA RAZA, eh?, and In a Land Called I Don’t Remember, deal with the experience of exile – the hardships, the heartache, and the horror – as well as revealing the fresh perspective refugees bring to North American society. Written in the 1990s, all three plays explore the far-reaching effects of the violence and terror the regime of now-ousted dictator Augusto Pinochet, still in power during the plays’ composition, inflicted on the Chilean population, both at home and abroad, effects explored in many of Aguirre’s award-winning later plays. These are impacts refugees cannot escape even when they manage to flee to physical safety; the plays’ explorations of refuge and recovery are as pertinent now as they were when they were first written.