Hay Festival Arequipa 2023 – Politics

Vargas Llosa, su otra gran pasión is the first political biography of Mario Vargas Llosa. Pedro Cateriano offers a detailed reconstruction of the ideological background of the Arequipan intellectual: from his Communist youth, through his rupture with the Cuban Revolution, to his transition to liberalism and failed bid for the presidency. This portrait offers a political life of one of the Spanish-speaking world’s most influential thinkers. In conversation with David Marcial Pérez.

LSP Peruvian Sign Language interpretation available

Explaining the past helps us to understand the present, and even more so when dealing with a country as complex as Peru. Natalia Sobrevilla and Alberto Vergara will be the ones to undertake this challenge, in a conversation that will begin with their recent publications. Perú global, co-edited by Vergara and Adrián Lerner, is the first volume in a series to cover the issue of Peru in the world. Around 20 researchers analyse key moments from the country’s past, set in a global context. Sobrevilla has written about the life of Ramón Castilla in Los años de Castilla (1840-1865), telling us about the figure who was president of the republic on two occasions. In conversation with María Luisa del Río.

Pedro Baños (Spain), a retired army colonel and geopolitical analyst, is a highly influential thinker about strategy and international relations in the Spanish-speaking world. In his latest book, Geohispanidad, he considers a geopolitical strategy to unite the Spanish-speaking countries and reinforce their global influence. He will talk to the diplomat and expert in international relations, Hernando Torres-Fernández, about the new alliances that are coming together, and the geopolitical board taking shape today.

Caviar and latte liberals, woke, lefties… all pejorative terms linked to a left wing, and all becoming more and more common. But, what is the woke left? Who are the latte drinkers? In Left Is Not Woke, Susan Neiman (United States) argues that the true progressive spirit —universalism, justice, reason— has broken up into identitarian posturing that is resulting in a new woke conservatism. The political commentator Eduardo Dargent (Peru) analyses the Peruvian version of the phenomenon in Caviar. Del pituco de izquierda al multiverso progre; as an insult, a label or a smokescreen, “caviar” is one of the most effective and persistent threads in the national political discourse. A conversation about works that (de)construct the left, with Pablo Quintanilla.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

With El rugido de nuestro tiempo, the Colombian essayist Carlos Granés continues his task of dissecting the present that he began in Salvajes de una nueva época. We live in a time of ideological and geopolitical disorder in which there are both decolonial debates and pan-Hispanic nostalgia; a time of messianic politicians and artists who sacrifice transgression to yield to the latest moral demands. To understand the noise of our times, there is nothing better than listening to Granés. In conversation with Patricia del Río.