Guillermo Calderón’s ‘Diciembre’ has West Coast premiere Wednesday

Outside of South America, the War of the Pacific (1879-84) is largely remembered today as a nasty but minor dispute, pitting Chile against Bolivia and Peru in a fight over mineral-rich territory and maritime access. But for the countries involved, the war remains a political and psychological open wound that continues to fester.

“It’s sort of a scar in our national history,” says Guillermo Calderón, 39, a Chilean native whose play “Diciembre” (December) opens a run of four performances Wednesday night at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles.

In Calderón’s black-comic drama, the long-ago hostilities and their bitter legacy serve as a partial backdrop to an investigation of warfare’s (im)morality and its corrosive effects on societies and human relationships.

Set on Christmas Eve 2014, it imagines that violence again has broken out among Chile, Peru and Bolivia. A young Chilean soldier, returning home for the holidays, finds himself caught between his older twin sisters, one a pacifist, the other a hawkish nationalist.

Although it references a 140-year-old conflict, the play also targets more contemporary issues. In the two decades since Chile ousted Gen. Augusto Pinochet, ending his 1973-90 military dictatorship, the country has flourished economically. That has attracted a flood of poor immigrant laborers from Peru, Chile’s less stable and prosperous neighbor.

Because Peru’s population has a higher proportion of Indians than Chile’s, many of the immigrants tend to be darker-skinned than the average Chilean. That and other differences have prompted a backlash in Chile against the Peruvian newcomers.

“They come here to work in construction if they are men and domestic service if they are women,” Calderón says of the Peruvians. “We don’t know what to do with them because they are the ‘enemy.’ If this vitriol goes over the top, these immigrants are going to pay dearly, so I fear for them.”

One of a trilogy

Although much of its action takes place in conversation around a table, “Diciembre” has a wide scope. It touches on Chile’s troubled dealings with its Mapuche Indian minority, and Peru’s resurgent Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist guerrilla movement, which terrorized the country during the 1980s, eliciting a scorched-earth government counter-strike.

The work is directed and translated by the author, and will be performed in Spanish with English supertitles by the Santiago-based ensemble Teatro en el Blanco, whose name is an idiomatic expression that roughly translates as “Theater on Target.” The group consists of Calderón and three actors, Jorge Becker, Trinidad Gonzalez and Paula Zuniga, who perform in “Diciembre.”

The play is part of a trilogy by Calderón. Its other works are “Neva,” set in Russia in the tumultuous year of 1905, whose central character is Anton Chekhov’s widow; and “Clase,” which was inspired by a recent Chilean students’ strike demanding better affordable education.

West Coast bow

Previously performed in Europe, South America and New York, “Diciembre” is having its West Coast premiere at REDCAT. Mark Murphy, REDCAT’S executive director, says that although the piece is “staged in a fairly traditional way,” it attains a fiercely poetic naturalism.

“It’s almost like Chekhov on speed,” Murphy says. “The characters speak in broad and poetic ways about larger issues going beyond simple dialogue. But they do so with such intensity and conviction that it takes an unrealistic yet completely believable tone.”

Describing his play as “unabashedly anti-patriotic,” Calderón hopes that “Diciembre” will cause foreign audiences to reflect on the complex aspects of their own countries’ nationalistic and militaristic aims. Rather than whipping up their citizens with bellicose rhetoric, he believes, “governments should really work on diplomatic solutions to all these problems we have.”

Over the next few years, many Latin American countries will be commemorating their 200th anniversaries of gaining independence from Spain. But, Calderón emphasizes, although these celebrations tend to emphasize national differences, most Latin countries share many similarities.

“It’s absurd to have all these divisions,” he says.

reed.johnson@latimes.com