Hay Festival celebrates two decades in Cartagena with Salman Rushdie, Jorge Ramos and Anne Applebaum

The initial idea of staging the Hay Festival in Cartagena, based on a cultural festival that had been born in Wales decades before, came from the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, although the blessing was given by the Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. It was 2005 and former president Juan Manuel Santos remembers the exact moment, when he was having breakfast with both writers and a Spanish woman — Cristina Fuentes La Roche, today the international coordinator of the Hay Festival — approached them. “The two looked at each other and at the same time gave her their blessing,” recalls Santos, when she proposed creating the Hay Festival Cartagena, the first in Latin America. Gabo promised to attend the inaugural edition, so the event already had the guarantee of attracting at least all of his admirers. The Cartagena festival, which every year brings together politicians, writers, filmmakers, comedians, and other cultural leaders from around the world, celebrates its 20th edition this year with a documentary about its history, a book containing photographs of its famous guests, and the same conversations as always.

“The Hay Festival Cartagena is the jewel in the crown,” says Philippe Sands, vice president of Hay, in the documentary. “The festival grew deep roots in Cartagena; it is not a circus that comes and goes,” says Fuentes La Roche by phone, underlining what has been achieved in two decades and pointing out it was a festival designed to “connect Colombia with the world, and the world with Colombia.”

In 2005, when the proposal arose, Colombia was trying to turn the page on one of its cruelest periods of conflict, after the bombs of Pablo Escobar, the Cali Cartel, and the strengthening of paramilitary and guerrilla groups. “Colombia was opening up to the world after a very dark period in its history and the festival at that time felt extremely necessary,” Fuentes La Roche recalls. Even so, in addition to Gabo’s blessing, it managed to obtain public funds from overseas (from the British embassy), from the private sector (the businessman Julio Ardila Lülle) and from the media (such as the defunct magazine Arcadia, as well as RCN radio and television). The entrance fee was just 12,000 pesos, equivalent to $5 at the time, which helped attract attendees.

“Busloads of students came from the farthest reaches of the country, from the deep south to the extreme north,” recalls writer Héctor Abad in the anniversary documentary. “I saved up, came by bus, and slept in a hostel for about 30,000 pesos a night, one of the most beautiful experiences of my life,” says film critic Samuel Castro.

The first edition opened with an event attended by a journalist who was a close friend of Gabo, Gustavo Tatis, and Jorge Franco, author of the novel Rosario Tijeras. Then came more names: the Nigerian essayist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Filipino Nobel Peace Prize winner María Ressa, the Argentine soccer player Jorge Valdano, the Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, and even the trumpet of the Dominican musician Wilfrido Vargas and the rap of the British electronic band Asian Dub Foundation. Among the most recurrent faces are the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, the Argentine columnist Leila Guerriero, and the U.S. journalist Jon Lee Anderson. And, of course, it is home to many Colombians, such as Héctor Abad, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Pilar Quintana, or Velia Vidal. Amalia Andrade, a writer from Cali, remembers working at the Hay Festival helping with logistics, then with social networks, and now attending as an author. “My eyes well up a little when I see the whole team, and the kids who come and pick you up, and I say: I was one of them,” she says.

The Hay Festival was branded as elitist, but its organizers point out they created Hay Comunidades, bringing more than one Nobel Prize winner to the poorest areas of Cartagena, as well as Hay Jóvenes, or Hay for teenagers exploring a future in journalism and having the opportunity to learn from the most reputable chroniclers in Latin America. “For me a milestone was when we took Chimamanda to the Nelson Mandela neighborhood of Cartagena. A huge crowd of young Afro people arrived, and she talked about the power of hair, about racism... it was incredible,” says Fuentes La Roche. Another legendary talk was that of Humberto de la Calle, when he was the government’s peace negotiator with the FARC guerrillas and was applauded by the Cartagena public. “It was unforgettable,” recalls De la Calle about the flood of praise for the efforts to achieve peace.

This year’s festival will feature an old friend of Hay Cartagena, the author Salman Rushdie, who will speak with novelist Juan Gabriel Vásquez on Friday night. Saturday night will end with a conversation with Mexican journalist Jorge Ramos, who for years directed the Univision newscast, and which will be moderated by Diana Calderón, a journalist from Caracol Radio. Historian Anne Applebaum and filmmaker Ava DuVernay are among other notable guests.

Fuentes La Roche insists that the great strength of the Hay Festival is actually the conversation, between those who think alike but from different professions, or those who think differently but are open-minded enough to argue. “We don’t want to be an activist festival; we want to be a festival where everything coexists,” she says. This is something that Colombian pianist Teresita Gómez, who has been invited to Hay, also values. “I, who am very old, see how we have advanced on a literary level, on a poetic level, on a musical level,” she says in the documentary. “Sometimes human beings get out of tune, and when we get out of tune, we don’t hear the harmonies well, and we can’t listen to each other, that’s the worst thing. These festivals are important because we can listen to each other.”

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