Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

If we wish to create most just societies, with an equality of opportunities and rights, it is important to analyse the structural racism that exists around us. We talk to five experts from five countries in the region about how to counter racism through education and change: with Mario Ellington (Guatemala), a Garifuna lawyer and former Vice-minister of Culture in Guatemala; Mónica Moreno Figueroa (Mexico), Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge; Claudia Mosquera Rosero-Labbé (Colombia), academic and Colombian Ambassador in Senegal; Federico Pita (Argentina), activist and intellectual; and Roberto Zurbano (Cuba), a cultural critic and essayist; in conversation with Yoseth Ariza Araújo, Director of the Centre for Afrodiaspora Studies at the ICESI University.

A conversation about Guillermo Cano, a figure to whom we are in debt for his determined journalistic ethic and commitment to the freedom of expression, and whose murder we continue to remember as one of the greatest losses in the history of our country. Almost a century after his birth, we celebrate the life and legacy of the journalist, writer and editor of El Espectador newspaper. With María Jimena Duzán (Colombia), journalist, political commentator and writer; Daniel Coronell (Colombia), director of Los Danieles and Head of News at Univisión; and María Elvira Samper (Colombia), an award-winning writer and journalist who has been at the helm of a number of Colombian news organisations. In conversation with Juan David Correa.

In 2025, the Hay Festival celebrates 20 years of conversations and thought in Colombia. To mark the anniversary, we have run a collaborative project in which Colombian society has helped us to put the twenty key questions for our time. This panel invites us to reflect on the vital nature of the sciences, nature and the future of research based on the questions: How can we guarantee the rights of animals and plants? Can science meet the demand for meat and fish with protein created in a laboratory? How can science tackle the problems of mental health and prolong our life expectancy? How can extensive farming by made compatible with protecting biodiversity in Colombia? With Jennifer Ackerman (United States), Weildler Guerra (Colombia), María Negroni (Argentina), Ricardo Villafañe (Colombia) and Javier Cajiao (Colombia).

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Aurora Vergara will lead a conversation on the origins of racism, from the caste system in India to the recent history of the United States. With Ava DuVernay (United States), film director and creator of the film Origin, nominated for an Academy Award, it tells of the tragedy and triumph of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Isabel Wilkerson, author of the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. In her film, DuVernay relates racism in the United States to the caste system in India and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. Suraj Yengde (India) lawyer of International Human Rights, professor at Harvard University, and author of Caste Matters, he is also one of the most important young intellectuals in India; he will share his research on the caste system in his home country with us.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

We talk literature and journalism, and about the links between the two with Lyonel Trouillot (Haiti) a committed novelist, poet and intellectual, one of the most outstanding representatives of global French-language literature, as well as a journalist and lecturer in French and Creole literatures at the University of Port-au-Prince. His most recent book is Bicentenario. In conversation with Felipe Restrepo Pombo.

Simultaneous interpretation from French to Spanish

Nikole Hannah-Jones (United States) is a journalist who specialises in racial justice, and who received the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, a collaborative effort that has also published a book and made a documentary film exploring the history of slavery in the United States. She will speak to Colombian academic Aurora Vergara about the 1619 Project and the new movements for historical reparation which are arising all over the Americas, working to recover the silenced histories of racialized groups who have been left out of official history.

The writer and journalist Leila Guerriero (Argentina) presents her book La llamada, a profile of the Argentine Silvia Labayru, a member of the armed group Montoneros and who in 1976 was kidnapped, tortured and raped at the Escuela de Mecánica la Armada clandestine detention centre, where thousands of people were held and murdered during the dictatorship. Labayru survived the experience, and was interviewed by Guerriero, beginning in 2021, while waiting for the outcome of the first trial for crimes of sexual violence committed against women who disappeared during the dictatorship, at which Labayru was a plaintiff. In conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo.

The Afro-Latin American movements have been building regional and national links since the 1990s, rising up against racism. According to the 2017 Global Atlas on Violence, for every 100 people murdered in Brazil, 71 are black. Osmundo Pinho (Brazil) will talk to Flavia Rios about how to portray, and also to change, this reality through art. He offers, in his work, detailed ethnographic description, and analyses racist patterns and practices in his country, particularly in Salvador (Bahia).

Simultaneous interpretation from Portuguese to Spanish available

We talk about the territory and its community management, about the link between the culture and history of peoples, with their places of residence, and the need for self-management shared among inhabitants. With Weildler Guerra (Colombia) Wayuu anthropologist, Olimpia Palmar (Colombia), Wayuu expert in human rights, communicator and activist; Gustavo Ulcué Campo (Colombia), Nasa film producer and activist; and Ricardo Villafañe (Colombia) Arhuaco Indigenous leader, advocate, and promoter of environmental protection. They will talk to Martin von Hildebrand.

What happens when women challenge power? In conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel, two writers explore, through fiction and non-fiction respectively, examples of cooperation among women. Txell Feixas (Spain) has been a correspondent in the Middle East, based in Beirut, for the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals and she is the author of the book Mujeres valientes, which deals with the struggles of women during the conflicts of the Middle East. She also received the 2024 National Journalism Prize for her book Aliadas. Laura Ortiz Gómez (Colombia) is the author of Indócil, a work of history that explores the “broom strike”, a popular movement that occurred in Argentina in 1907 when women, inhabitants of the conventillos of Buenos Aires, refused to pay their rent and took to the streets.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (United States / Palestine) poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of the poetry book Something About Living, winner of the 2024 National Book Award, as well as Kaan and her Sisters. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024 she curated a year-long subscription of Palestinian poetry books with Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore. Lena spent ten years working with journalists and editors as a volunteer for Seattle's Arab American community organizations. She helped to tell the stories of people living between two homelands, people who speak in translation and navigate the realities of long wars. Odette Yidi David is a Palestinian-Colombian researcher and adjunct professor at Universidad del Norte. In conversation with Odette Yidi David, (Colombia / Palestine).

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

There are 134 million Afro-descendent people living in Latin America, but most of this population lives in a state of inequality. How can we change this scenario? Ana María Belique (Dominican Republic) is the co-founder and leader of Reconoci.do, a movement for empowering Afro-descendent Dominicans in their struggle for equality and nationality rights, and to be free of racial discrimination; she is also the author of the children’s book La muñeca de Dieula. Ochy Curiel (Dominican Republic), activist and Latin American and Caribbean feminist theorist, social anthropologist and singer-songwriter. She is a spokesperson for autonomous, lesbian, antiracists and decolonial feminism. Lyonel Trouillot, born in Port-au Prince, teaches Creole and French literature. As well as publishing the literary magazine Demembre, he also offers participants the chance to seek advice from experienced writers at his Ateliers du Jeudi Soir workshops. Author of La belle amour humaine, he won the 2012 Geneva Book Fair Literary Prize. In conversation with Yuderkys Espinosa (Dominican Republic), Afro-Caribbean philosopher and writer and decolonial feminist.

Consecutive interpretation from French to Spanish available

In the last decade, Latin America has shown itself to be a region that leads in terms of racial justice and the fight against racism, with a wave of collective actions. We talk about them and their territorial characteristics with Bocafloja (Mexico), an interdisciplinary artist and curator who, in his work, tackles themes such as critical race theory, the Global South, coloniality and the African diaspora in Latin America; Tanya Hernández (United States), a specialist in comparative racial relations and anti-discrimination law, and author of Inocencia racial: desenmascarando la antinegritud de los latinos y la lucha por la igualdad; and Maricruz Rivera Clemente, founder of Corporación Piñones se Integra COPI and co-founder of Corredor Afro in Piñones in northern Puerto Rico, and activist against the discrimination of the Afro-descendent population. In conversation with Agustín Laó-Montes.

The origin of racism against Afro-descendent people goes back to slavery, empire building and the capitalist development of the world. In conversation with Paula Moreno will be Susan Neiman, a US philosopher and writer, author of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil; and Rinaldo Walcott (Barbados / Canada) is a writer, critic, researcher in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality, and author of the book On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available