Criticism came at the end of the Language Congress

Leave the place of comfort and obligatory praise. Sit. Open questions and highlight the differences. The closing speech of Maria Teresa Andruetto at the VIIIth International Congress of the Spanish Language (Cile) tried to do so and much more. It has been firmly implanted and will surely remain an example of critical attitude and desire for insubordination.

The narrator and poet of Cordoba, the only Spanish writer to have received the Hans Christian Andersen Prize (2012), author of Native language (2007) and Few people like tranquility (2017), addressed almost all the controversial topics that animated the pre-event discussions and criticized the absence of some debates.

He defined himself as part of a context and a society that has things to say to the Congress and to the Spanish cultural entities, and he expressed them without hair in the language, arguing with strength and elegance in front of the audience who filled the theater Saturday afternoon. from the liberator San Martín.

Language control policies, calls to the order of casticity ("a word that sounds so close to chastity", he pointed out) and inclusive language were some of the topics discussed.

There was a wait on the tone of his closing conference.

The presentation was made by Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute, who briefly recalled the importance of feminist thought, the horizons of emancipation opened by this struggle and the need to draw communicating vessels between intimate life. and history, axes that he related to the literature and cultural work that Andruetto develops.

"It has not been easy for me to accept the invitation to close this congress, because of the diversity of dissents that the community to which I belong and for my own dissidences, for different reasons, "said Andruetto at the beginning. He also mentioned that he had made his position known in advance and praised the democratic spirit of the organizers of the Cile.

"There is a crack in everything / that is, so is the light between," were his first words, a quote from Leonard Cohen that the Argentine political context acquires a meaning that is not limited to poetics.

"I am here as a writer and the place of the writer is, as far as language is concerned, a place of disobedience," he warned in the first paragraph.

He even asked about the name of the event, Congress of the Spanish language, claiming to speak Castilian. And drew one of the many uncomfortable questions: "Why a congress in these pampas without local intervention on its content?".

He criticized the union and uniformity and homogenization of overwriting or making invisible the Métis linguistic variety that is spoken and written in America, and asked questions about the economic spinoffs and political approaches of those who badume the possession of a single Spanish. .

Parts of its reading were in line with the manifesto of the first international meeting: linguistic rights as human rights, developed in parallel and in reaction to the event organized by the Royal Academy of Spain, and known as the name of "anti-Congress". "

Ovation, applause and annotations

The standing theater and an ovation including cries of "Bravo" (it would have been more accurate to hear "Brava") welcomed the speech with enthusiasm and approval. The author had already received applause for recognition and affection before the speech began, when she visited the stands to access the stage before going backstage.

At the end of the conference, after the last applause, García Montero spoke again. He praised the possibility of disagreement and discussion freely given by the Congress, and added comments on certain points that had touched Andruetto.

Beyond the informality, beyond the only curious fact to close closure after closure, the moment was lived as a useless explanation and as a correction on some points mentioned by Andruetto. Probably, many people present and those who followed the transmission through streaming in the Argentine pavilion and from their computers, they understood as something untimely and dishonest.

Dissident vision

"Companies and multinational capitals promote the expansion of the Castilian market, in its Spanish modality or in what they call the neutral, uniform and hegemonic American, in order to strengthen the monopoly of the language as a business, "Andruetto turned in one of the highlights of his lecture, playing a geopolitical look at the language, the conflicts and the interests that are played therein.

Another segment was devoted to criticizing the lack of discussion tables and debates on inclusive language. "There were 250 presentations of specialists and intellectuals from 32 countries and no discussion on the subject!", He warned.

He emphasized his vision of language as a territory in conflict. "The battles are in the language," he said. "The sentences are disputed and the new ways of naming – those that appear with such virulence – make models of social behavior visible."

In the end, there was more reproach: "I think then of the congresses of the language where the host country is actively involved in its content, in a congress which reviews its name, a congress where are discussed the economic advantages of the teaching Spanish in the world. (…), because if there is wealth in our language, this wealth does not lie in rigidity but in the possibility of accepting power. of the various and the multiple ".