The IX International Congress of the Spanish Language will finally be held in Arequipa, the birthplace of Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. The Peruvian appointment will be the last week of March 2023, under the motto “Spanish language, miscegenation and interculturality”.
After previous attempts, since it was held in Cartagena (Colombia) in 2007 to honor Gabriel García Márquez, the Arequipa event seemed unavoidable, but the agreement between the organizers – the Cervantes Institute and the Royal Spanish Academy – with the country of the host city and the National University of San Agustín de Arequipa could not be obtained until 2019, during the previous congress, in Córdoba (Argentina), when the Peruvian writer announced it before it was closed.
No congress will be as important as this one because we will touch on a central theme, cultural miscegenation, with the language of colonization and the original languages
From March 27 to 30, the Peruvian city will bring together writers such as Sergio Ramírez, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Gioconda Belli, Santiago Roncagliolo, Jorge Volpi and Martín Caparrós, among others, as well as figures from other disciplines, such as Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, recent winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences; the neurobiologist Rafael Yuste and the economist José Luis García Delgado.
In today’s press conference, broadcast telematically from the auditorium of the University of Arequipa, the details of this triennial academic and social event were given, which has overcome the pandemic with a minimum of mismatch. There was not so much luck in 2010 in Valparaíso (Chile), due to the great earthquake that occurred on the eve of the inauguration and that forced the congress to be held online.
Meditating on identity is decisive for those of us who believe in human dignity
Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the RAE and president of the Assembly of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale), has highlighted that “the congresses are a celebration of the language, the greatest show that Spanish gives in all the nations that have adapted as his own.
The academic has also described the congresses as “the great games of Spanish”, due to the multitude of disciplines that they host. And about the one in Arequipa in 2023, he has stated: “None will be as important as this one because we will touch on a central theme, cultural miscegenation, with the language of colonization and the original languages. Spanish is a mestizo language since its birth.
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Words endorsed by the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, who welcomed the fact that, after 25 years of congresses, linguistic miscegenation has finally been addressed: “Meditating on identity is decisive for those of us who believe in human dignity ”. And he has warned of the “danger of closed identities.” Given this, “nothing better than defending cultural dialogue”, he has concluded.
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Miscegenation and interculturality, axes of the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language