What remains the congress of the language: "The Spanish will be what will happen in America"

"There is a crack in everything – it's there that the light comes in light, quoting Leonard Cohen – it's where I'd like to look." Cordovan Maria Teresa Andruetto, talented writer and appreciated of his colleagues, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, was chosen and invited by the director of the Cervantes Institute, the poet Luis García Montero, to close the VIIIth Language Congress (CILE).

The beginning of his several-page speech, read at an extraordinary pace, confirmed what Andruetto had predicted a few days earlier, when the congress had just begun. A critical discourse, which would raise several burning questions of this international meeting, beginning with the lack of inclusive language as a theme for communications in the official program ("Sometimes omissions make more noise than presences") and finally, if possible, by the proposition itself, of the Spanish language as a new example of cultural domination.

Thus, although this congress based its debates on America and the future of Spanish, Andruetto inquired about the validity, on these lands, of Castilian Castilian, which connected economic interests, market and hegemony. "The Castilian of this land, is it the same language? Are the twenty-two Spanish-speaking nations linguistically sovereign?"

Andruetto responded to "the requirement of uniformity in ways of saying and thinking" and raised the dangers of a "language suitable for all audiences", the nineteen languages ​​of the territory and three thousand bilingual schools, which, he said, few know: "Reading and writing are tools of power", he said. It aimed at a system of homologation of Spanish teachers whose titles, say, grant to the Spanish institutes the imposition of translations in castizo and the subtitling in Spain of the Mexican film Rome, of Alfonso Cuarón, quoting the director in his complaints on this point.

He also questioned the structure of the contents of the same congress that was closing. The Spanish authorities have decided that, in the meantime, it has been decided by the Spanish authorities. At his side, Garcia Montero felt entitled to point out some problems, while applause was already silenced, Cordovan's speech concluded. He did so by showing the heads of the language academies of the Latin American countries, sitting in the front row, who had gathered the content of this congress of Cordoba, he said. Also stating that they are not Spanish, that no institution in Spain, those responsible for the subtitling of Rome"But, an Anglo-Saxon society, Netflix", whose decision was strongly questioned by personalities of the Spanish culture. He did it with the elegance of someone who, instead of refuting, speaks of optimism and illusions, pointing out changes as positive as the fact that the titles Spanish teachers are no longer the responsibility of the Spanish academies, but of all the countries where they are trained. . While celebrating, with smiling Andruetto, the freedom of a meeting in which those who disagree can be listened to in order to build this debate in a future perspective (of the language).

The subtle tension of this final report reflects those who set the tone of the meeting. This had its counter-congress, the First International Meeting for Language Rights, based at the UNC and focused on language as a human right. In this forum, in which speakers of CILE, such as Andruetto or Mempo Giardinelli, spoke of languages, in the plural. And in its vast program, with different places, activities and first-clbad guests, issues related to Aboriginal languages ​​and education were discussed.

"Our sphere is that of freedom, in that sense I think that more than an anticongress, as if we were facing we have to get used to discussing. Who is born in a dictatorship knows that what is really important for coexistence is freedom without fear. And in this sense we must get used to arguing with our reasons, in the strongest way, but knowing that we are not enemies, only people who think differently. That's why we wanted there to be voices that think differently, that's our intention. I am very pleased that, to the extent that I have been responsible, critical voices of the highest level are present in this discussion ", García Montero told us about this contracumbre.
The cultural relations between Spain and Latin America, with Barcelona as capital of the expansion of Latin America, were the axis of other spaces, like the table "Travels and tornavales". There he shone, as he usually does, Mexican Juan Villoroin an article called Conquest and counter-conquest whose power could not break even the interruption of the Chilean Jorge Edwards, who arrived late with a flu that he treated "with whiskey and aspirin".

"A lot of blood has flowed so that today we understand each other in this language," said Villoro, a great scholar and scholar in his country's history, in an extraordinary speech, as scholarly as it is revealing, who put his finger on the controversy raised by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the Mexican president who asked the Spanish monarchy to apologize for the barbarism of the conquest. "In these days when forgiveness is in fashion, contemporary Mexicans, the product of miscegenation, are perhaps the ones to whom we should ask for forgiveness.: in Mexico, more than sixty languages ​​are spoken and all are in danger. Mexicans continue to perpetrate colonialism, "Villoro said, and he characterized the identities as fiction," supposed, shared, but not necessarily real. "And he quoted Octavio Paz about the Zapatistas," a triumph of language " , to finish reading a short text of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), as relevant as poetic, which put the audience on foot.

But perhaps – and in addition to the presence of the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who celebrated his 83rd birthday in Cordoba and the appointment of his native country, Arequipa, at CILE 2022 – this is the painting on the poetry that has marked another high point Between academic speeches, long enumerative introductions of each guest's CV – something that could save the public, in Google's time, for the next congress – and a moderator , Maria Negroni, who read them from the cellphone, the interventions of Elvira Sastre and Joaquín Sabina shined like unique stars in an opaque sky. And as nothing can be more soporific than to theorize about poetry, with terms that the same speakers were entangled in proununcia – interculturality, multiculturalism, technological neoliberalism, homogenous globalization -, the two Spanish poets, she of 27 years old and him 70-year-olds just met, they were called to deliver something from what they write.

"You know it's poetry when you read it, not when you study it," Sastre said., in case there are doubts. Her short and powerful presentation focused on her own story, that of a student who, through the Internet and networks, has been successful in spreading and improving not only her work but also her work. bang of young poetry, although the term misses him. Sastre said things like: "I think that poetry is universal and that it is a genre based on freedom", "The Internet and social networks are an inexhaustible source of poetic discoveries. Internet has allowed poetry to become visible. And he ended up reading an incendiary poem about women who received an ovation.

At Sabina, they left him for the last time, when he finally read with his voice of aguardentosa a beautiful autobiographical, melancholic and profound, glittering and clbadical text, which confirmed, if any, that the one who now occupies the stadiums was and remains a sensitive and inspired poet, fragile and introspective. In this sense, his presence as such at this congress should be hailed as one of the good initiatives of García Montero, who is also his close friend for decades. Before sharing her texts, Sabina greeted with a political declaration: "With the rise of the small nationalisms that we live unfortunately in the world, I take refuge in my language." A few hours later – it was the first afternoon – he would return to the stage of the magnificent Teatro General del Libertador San Martín for a tribute in which Sastre, Benjamín Prado, García Montero and other writers, also Argentineans would read his poems while a group of tango musicians – among them Adriana Varela – offered him a repertoire of that music that fell in love with Argentina.