Celebrating the Indigenous Americas: Poetry Reading

The Latin American Studies Center at CU Boulder invites you to a virtual week celebrating Indigenous languages and cultures in the Americas.

About this Event

The University of Colorado at Boulder provides real-time captioning and ASL interpretation for events upon request. Requests for real-time captioning and interpretation should be submitted at least 72 hours in advance of the event. Please email lasc@colorado.edu for assistance.

Over the last decades the literary production in indigenous languages has increased in quantity and quality. Indegenous authors from different regions from the Americas are recovering the ancestral traditions and cultural values from their communities and using them to create literary production of a universal appeal. In addition, women are taking a leading role in the creation and dissemination of literary work, especially in indegenous languages. Currently, many of these works have been translated to a number of languages. However, there is more work to do in terms of widespread dissemination given the historical marginalization of indigenous languages.

Speakers:

  • Fabiola Carrillo Tieco
  • Elvira Espejo Ayca
  • Irma Alvarez Ccoscco

Fabiola Carrillo Tieco

Náhuatl writer Fabiola Carrillo Tieco holds a degree in history from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and teaches Mesoamerican Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de México, where she is a doctoral student. Fabiola has published several titles including “In tlazinque / La perezosa” (2012); “In xinachtli in tlahtolli-Amoxtli zazanilli / El semillero de palabras-Libro de cuentos” (2014); and “Yei xinachtli, Yei tlahtolli / Tres semillas, tres palabras” (2015). Fabiola was also a coordinator for the Project Toconehua, which produced a book with the same name, and published her poetry in 2019 in the serie Xochitlajtoli in Círculo de Poesía.

Elvira Espejo Ayca is a visual artist, musician, weaver, and oral storyteller who expresses the traditions of her hometown, ayllu Qaqachaka, Oruro, Bolivia. Between 2013-2020, she worked as director of Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia. In 2020, she won the Goethe Medal “for outstanding cultural personality,” the highest distinction in culture that Germany's Federal Government offers. As a visual artist, she exhibited her work at Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, HKW Casa de las Culturas del Mundo in Berlín, and Espacio Simón I Patiño in La Paz.

Irma Alvarez Ccoscco is a Quechua poet and language activist from Haquira, in Peru’s Apurímac region. She is a former fellow of the Artist Leadership Program at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. In 2018 she presented her first short-film Runasimpi Qillqaspa, about the efforts to promote literacy among Quechua native speakers in the Andes. Additionally, she has been involved in projects about the use of Quechua language in radio, software, and programmers in Peru and the United States. (Bio taken from Quechua at Penn)

Friday, March 5, 2021 at 5:00pm to 6:00pm

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