Peru without the Language Congress: what happened, how are the moods in Torre Tagle and what Arequipa loses with the cancellation

The IX International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE) of 2023 will take place in the city of Cádiz and no longer in Arequipa. From March 27 to 30, in the main forum of our language, flamenco will be heard, but not the yaraví. The decision, announced yesterday by Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), was taken after an emergency plenary session. As reported the day before, after members like our Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa warned that the social crisis that the country is going through after Pedro Castillo’s unfortunate self-coup would make the congress unfeasible, after the meeting and in front of the press, the authority of the RAE spoke for everyone: “There are not the best circumstances for it to be held there”, he said using a mild euphemism after taking the White City out of the equation.

The solution found by the RAE and the Association of Spanish Language Academies (ASALE) to host the congress was to choose the city of Cádiz, in the extreme south of Spain, maintaining without modifications, as Muñoz Machado assured, the program of activities that puts emphasis on miscegenation and interculturality, approved for the appointment in the White City. “Maybe we have to add a table or a conference that has to do with Spain”, added the academic, who clarified that it was impossible to postpone an event that in 2022 had already modified its schedule due to the health crisis.

Along with Muñoz Machado, the current president of the Peruvian Academy of Language, Eduardo Hopkins Rodríguez, participated virtually at the press conference held at the RAE premises in Madrid. In statements to this newspaper, the specialist in Hispanic literature highlighted the importance of Arequipa as a cultural center, and regretted that, after being canceled as a venue, the international and local tourism that had been planned will also be lost. “All this harms us culturally and economically.. As I explained in yesterday’s meeting [miércoles] in ASALE, We have the budget assigned by the State, we have the support of the National University of San Agustín, the authorities of the region and Arequipa companies of the first order. I also explained that the working group was fully organized, but a good part of ASALE said that they would not come because they considered that the security conditions were unpredictable.”, affirms the academic.

Thus, the 250 international guests expected have had to change the destination of their ticket. At the end of March, on the days of the Language Congress, the restored Municipal Theater of Arequipa, previously chosen as the epicenter of the event, will remain empty. Hopefully three years from now, in a next edition of CILE, Arequipa will find itself in “the best circumstances” so as not to miss this opportunity once again.

count the disappointment

Everything is consummated. In the corridors of the Chancellery, locally responsible for the organization of the International Language Congress, the feeling that is lived after the withdrawal of Arequipa and the election of Cádiz as a new place, is one of deep disappointment. It is not for less: they have been years embroidering fine, convincing authorities, negotiating budgets, fulfilling all the requirements, so that the organization of the largest forum of our language to be held in the White City is impeccable. But nothing can be done against reality. “We have worked very responsibly, but unfortunately the circumstances have been adverse. We trust that the tenth congress will take place in Arequipa and that it will be magnificent, because Arequipa has all the conditions for it to be so.”, affirms Alonso Ruiz Rosas, CILE coordinator in this city.

In effect, everything was ready so that from March 27 to 30, in addition to the working days of the congress, exhibitions, book presentations, editorial novelties, concerts and theater shows would be held in Arequipa. The attendance of 250 international lecturers and speakers was expected, including academics, writers, linguists, historians, thinkers, editors, creators, teachers, journalists and scientists. Names had already been announced: the Colombian Héctor Abad Faciolince, the Nicaraguans Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, the Mexican Jorge Volpi, the Argentine Martín Caparrós. Also the recent winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, the neurobiologist Rafael Yuste or the economist José Luis García Delgado.

guest word

Of course, the guests lament the drastic change of destination. Consulted by this newspaper, the poet Gioconda Belli comments: “I was very excited to return to Arequipa, it would have been a magnificent setting for the congress, but I think that the solution to this crisis in Peru and the return to peace must be the country’s priority at this time. I hope that the language is expressed in the necessary dialogue to heal these wounds, that there is another type of ‘language congress’ among Peruvians and that words find true solutions. I am sure that later there will be time for academics and writers to discover the wonder that Arequipa is.“, it states.

For Santiago Roncagliolo, a Peruvian writer based in Barcelona, ​​also invited to the congress, the cancellation is very sad news: “It reaffirms that we are not in the same conditions as the countries around us. That we must solve very basic things that others take for granted”, he points out. As the author of “Red April” warns, from a more symbolic level, canceling a language congress is equivalent to declaring that words are no longer worth anything. “Talking has become a luxury that we cannot afford”he is sorry.

For her part, academic Eliana González, PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Navarra and professor at the University of Piura, regrets the missed opportunity because, in her opinion, not only a city like Arequipa loses, but all of Peru. “The congress was going to address miscegenation and interculturality, issues that we should not stop talking about in a country like ours, mestizo, in essence“, He says.

As Eduardo Hopkins, president of the Peruvian Academy of Language, explained to us, after the unanimous decision to change the venue to a Spanish city, he asked his peers to hold a part of the congress in Spain and another in Arequipa, but his proposal did not was accepted for organizational reasons. The directors of the Academies got involved in the search for a new headquarters. As reported by the Spanish press, the options were Cádiz, La Rioja and Salamanca, and after consulting the availability of the King of Spain, who traditionally opens the event, the Andalusian city was chosen.

Among the bad news, we will rescue two positive aspects from the fire: the first, that the congress on Andalusian land will maintain the structure, content, national participants and all that had been advanced in the organization of the discussions and the tables designed for Arequipa; The second thing, as Hopkins points out, is that At the meeting of the academies, after proposing that the next congress be held in Arequipa in 2026, those present unanimously declared their favorable will to propose it in a timely manner.

Sadness in Chancellery

But inside Torre Tagle, sources who asked to keep a secret were surprised. Until Wednesday night, in negotiations with the Cervantes Institute, the proposal was being handled that both cities, Arequipa and Cádiz, share the organization, with a program in which the White City maintained a substantive cultural program. For this reason, the announcement of the director of the RAE leaning only towards the Andalusian city was not in the calculations. “The opinion of the majority of academics and the endorsement of the 23 national academies gathered prevailed.”, they acknowledge. At that meeting, the Foreign Ministry was not present. And although it is expected that official contacts will be resumed soon, it is already tacitly accepted in Torre Tagle that the issue of double headquarters is no longer viable.

Ministry officials suspect that, in addition to the predictable concern of academics, the position of the Mexican Academy influenced the decision to cancel the Mistiana headquarters. “Mexico has a very radical position, especially after declaring its ambassador persona non grata”, they pointed out to us. Apparently, the academies also suffer from internal pressures in an uncomfortable political context.