The studied units are the remnants of a Paleozoic accretionary prism exposed along the central Chilean coast. The Choapa Metamorphic Complex (CMC) and the Puerto Manso and Huentelauquen formations have been recognized. The CMC consists of intensely deformed quartz-mica schists and phyllites, amphibole schists and epimetamorphic rocks, generally bounded by fault zones. All these units have a poliphase deformation, and in some cases a correlation can be established from one unit to another. For example, the fourth deformation event recognized in the Punta Claditas Gray Schists is correlated to the event that generated the S2 foliation of the amphibole schists, which was dated at 359 +/- 36 Ma (Middle Devonian). These rocks underwent several episodes of regional metamorphism, with low to middle P/T gradients. The protolith of the quartz-mica units are graywackes and arkoses, deposited in a submarine fan, while the protolith of the amphibole schists are oceanic basalts. The Puerto Manso Formation is a turbiditic series (Devonian to Lower Carboniferous), showing two deformations. The Huentelauquen Formation is a pelitic unit (Upper Carboniferous to Permian), with slaty cleavage. All these units were originated in a subduction complex developed since before the Middle Devonian to the Permian, along the margin of Gondwana. With the development of the accretionary prism and the deformation of these deposits, an outer arc ridge and a forearc basin to the East of it might have formed. This basin received the sediments originated on the continent and the emerged ridge. The Agua Dulce Metaturbidites and the Puerto Manso Formation could represent increasingly shallower, younger and less deformed and metamorphosed levels of the ridge or the basin. The Huentelauquen Formation represents the end stadium of the evolution of the prism.