Hay Festival Arequipa 2021 – Heritage

We celebrate 50 years of the Turner publishing house with some of the most outstanding writers from its portfolio. Fernando Cervantes, a prominent historian and researcher who teaches at the University of Bristol, is the author of Conquistadores (2021), a book that revises the history that was written by the winners of the conquest. Drawing on diaries, letters, chronicles and treaties, the author has investigated the process of conquest and colonization of what today is Latin America, analysing both the glorification and condemnation of figures such as Columbus, Pizarro and Cortés, questioning what really happened in the so-called “New World”. In conversation with the historian Natalia Sobrevilla.

Gloria Mendoza Borda (Peru) is a Peruvian-born poet whose work has been translated into Aymara, English, French, Portuguese, Italian and Greek. She has directed literary projects, including the Arequipa Alianza Francesa’s Literary Thursdays, and the Tertulia Literaria Itinerante initiative. In 2020 she published the poetry book Amusa. David Robertson (Canada) is a writer and speaker. He is a member of the Norway House Cree nation and has published over 25 books, a number of which have featured on Canadian educational syllabuses. His most recent work is the illustrated children’s book On the Trapline, which celebrates some of the indigenous traditions of Canada. They will talk to Ingrid Bejerman.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

The English version of this event is availble here to watch again

mónimo is an independent Latin American publishing house born in 2021 that seeks to build a children’s catalogue focusing on fiction, from Peru. Its first book is the collection of Peruvian Gods, beings and spirits in the form of the alphabet: Diosario. Using humour and with a unique visual narrative, it seeks to bring us close to the fantastic world that this country embraces. With an interdisciplinary group of talents from different nationalities, Diosario is built with its feet on the ground, placing the most venerated creatures at a close distance while we touch the sky. With the writer of the book Elena Fernández Ferro (Argentina), the illustrator Mariana Río (Portugal) and the editor Julia Viñas (Argentina).

For children ages 2 - 8

The Instituto Cervantes has organized and exceptional exhibition in Madrid: Libros y autores en el Virreinato del Perú. El legado de la cultura letrada hasta la Independencia. The first press in South America was located in Lima, and between 1584 and 1700 the Peruvian capital had the monopoly of the editing business in the region. Peru also had the most important libraries, and the elites had power over what was being written and were fostering a series of decisive ideas for their country's emancipation. The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, will talk about this topic with one of the curators of the exhibition, Alonso Ruiz Rosas.

El ABC de los seres fantásticos en Perú, the most recent publication by the gifted children’s writer Christian Ayuni, is an album book that presents the alphabet illustrated with extraordinary figures from the ancient myths and legends of Peru. Christian will share the stories and images of these marvellous beings at this event.


For children ages 5 to 10

According to Javier Cercas, “a hero is a person who does not fail at the only moment at which failure is unthinkable” and the history of Peru is full of examples of brave men and women who fit this definition. This book commemorates those heroic individuals who have contributed to building the nation and Peruvian culture, some of them who are well known, others who are forgotten or made invisible, but heroes nonetheless. This book reflects on Peruvian identity, the multi-ethnic and multicultural character of the country, with its two hundred year history and development being celebrated now, through images created by some of the country’s most talented illustrators. The book’s editor, Víctor Ruiz, will talk about this engaging compilation of stories and illustrations.

For children ages 9 to 12

Manuel “Manny” Medrano (U.S.A.) was an Economics student at Harvard when he deciphered an accounting system based on knots, called quipus, used by the Inca Empire to take accounts and store information. Medrano is now a researcher in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he continues to analyse archaeological, historical and ethnographical information in order to learn more about the pre-Hispanic world through this language that reveals so much about the socioeconomic transformations undergone by the indigenous Peruvians with the arrival of the conquest and the subsequent colonization of American territory. Medrano writes about his findings in his new book Quipus. Mil años de historia anudada en los Andes y su futuro digital (2021). In conversation with the Peruvian archaeologist Ulla Holmquist.