La Maestra Explained

La Maestra (i.e., "The Schoolteacher" in English) is a Latin American play written in 1968 by the Colombian playwright, Enrique Buenaventura (1925–2003). It is the first in his series of small one act plays, Los Papeles Del Infierno [The Roles of Hell].

Plot

The play tells the story of a Colombian schoolteacher, La Maestra, who is dead. This creates an eerie, dreamlike quality to the play. Each character she speaks to in the play is someone who has held importance in her past. In the beginning she is seated on a bench and the characters she interacts with do not see her, just as she does not see them. The play opens with the teacher describing the rain in the town and how everything becomes red and muddy. The play ends after the teacher is raped by army sergeants; she cannot eat because of the traumatizing experience and it begins to rain again.

Characters

La Maestra is the main character. She “converses” one-sidedly with each of the following characters. In the beginning, she states that she is dead and describes where she used to live - in a house made of red clay with a straw roof. She grew up in a small town called “Hope” which was named by her father. She truly cares for the children whom she teaches; when she doesn't eat she is thinking of the children. She teaches them the history of their country, Colombia.

Themes

The play deals with the ideas of life and death and how they are intertwined. A major theme is family and how it relates to tradition and culture. La Maestra was the schoolteacher in the town where she lived, and before that her mother was the first schoolteacher of the town; her mother taught her how to be a teacher and then La Maestra became a teacher just as her mother had done before her. Political themes linked to the play include the military and the government. Social themes in the play are violence and rape. The military dictatorship during the 1960s used excessive force as well as violence when they encroached upon towns, as they did in the town of “Hope”.

References