José Rivera, Neoliberalism, and the Outside of Politics

José Rivera's play School of the Americas, which recounts the last days of Che Guevara's life in a Bolivian schoolhouse, presents a self-conscious example of the problem of political thinking in the contemporary period of US neoliberalism. The limits of political thinking are shaped by a focus on character and rhetorical persuasion, which forecloses the possibility of systemic or structural thinking, a concern the Guevara character voices within the play. Engaging negative production reviews, the author argues that problems may emerge because Rivera is foregrounding the difficulty of thinking differently about politics. The essay concludes with the ambivalent legacy of Che's Bolivian mission suggested by both the play and a contemporary neoliberal development project in Bolivia: La Ruta del Che.