Hay Festival: Collaboration and Fiction to Transform Narratives

The ninth edition of the Hay Festival will take place from September 5 to 8, featuring over 100 events across various locations in Querétaro. Esteemed thinkers and activists will be in attendance, including myself, participating in a panel on museums and colonialism.

The decolonization of museums advocates for a critical reassessment of their role in perpetuating colonial perspectives, urging them to adopt more inclusive and equitable approaches that reflect the diversity of the histories and cultures they represent.

A key issue in this debate is the repatriation of cultural heritage objects acquired during the colonial era, often in unethical ways, and ensuring that the narratives presented are not limited to Eurocentric or colonial viewpoints.

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In this context, the Hay Festival has partnered with the British Museum on projects to rethink collections. The first phase involved an exploration of archaeological objects from the Americas (the collection contains over 60,000 objects from the region, only ten percent of which have been displayed) by ten Latin American writers. Each selected an object and crafted a text, either fiction or essay, reflecting on the role of museums, historical narratives, and colonial and postcolonial logics. These texts were published in Volver a Contar: Latin American Writers in the Archives of the British Museum.

Last year, the experience continued with six writers: Rita Indiana (Dominican Republic), Philippe Sands (United Kingdom), Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Colombia), Selva Almada (Argentina), Gabriela Wiener (Peru), and Josefa Sánchez (Mexico). They researched diaries, letters, sketches, and transactions documenting how the objects arrived at the museum and created narratives centered on “explorers, dreamers, and thieves,” published by Anagrama in Spanish and Charco Press in English.

This year, the festival will feature conversations with prominent thinkers and activists. We will turn our gaze to the Global South with guests like Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2014, who will discuss his efforts to improve the lives of children victimized by exploitation, and Petina Gappah, a Zimbabwean writer who will explore the clash between Europe and Africa.

Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, one of Latin America’s most celebrated poets, will join us. Zurita is renowned for the evocative phrase “ni pena ni miedo,” which captures the spirit of resistance and defiance in the face of oppression and suffering in the Atacama Desert. We will also hear from Oleksandra Matviichuk, a lawyer and activist from the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

As writer Rebecca Solnit, also attending, has said, every existing crisis is, in part, a crisis of narrative. We need to rapidly and decisively move away from the fossil fuel era, a topic closely tied to colonialism, but this won’t happen until we change the ideas driving our actions. It is a battle of imagination, and for that, we need writers and fiction.

Venues and Costs

General program events cost 20 Mexican pesos per ticket, with many free activities at Hay Festival Joven (for university students) and Hay Festival Comunitario (with events in the Historic Center and all Querétaro Delegations), as well as Editorial Talent, focusing on the book ecosystem.

Physical ticket sales begin on September 2 at the Teatro de la Ciudad / Cineteca Rosalío Solano, located at Calle 16 de Septiembre 44-E, Centro Histórico, Centro, 76000.

Find the complete schedule at: Hay Festival Querétaro, México

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