dep art amento de conser v ación y - Fundación César Manrique

E N G L I S H V E R S I O N
Platform for
reflection:
Archipelago forum
Juan José Armas
Marcelo
On mestizo writing.
A personal experience
1999 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
During the conference delivered on 28 February, Günter
Grass presented the last two of his works to be translated
into Spanish, Fünf Jahrzhente and Crab walk. In his lecture he
took a very clear stand against the war in Iraq. He also told
his audience that Lanzarote had made a strong aesthetic
impression on him and regretted that the island, like all
worldly paradises, was endangered. He urged its residents to
make every effort to protect it.
He also addressed the immigration issue in his conference:
Europe has failed to contribute to the development of poor
countries, missing the opportunity to raise their populations’
standard of living and thereby prevent their exodus towards
more developed areas. Europeans have, on the contrary, been
able to reach agreement on how to protect their societies
from such immigration.
This platform enlists the participation of researchers,
intellectuals and persons engaging in creative work on the
Canary Islands. Since its inception, it has proved to be an ideal
setting for debate and reflection on different issues related to
culture, science and environment on the archipelago. In 2003,
writer and journalist Juan José Armas Marcelo participated in
the forum.
J. J. Armas Marcelo holds a BA in classic studies from the
Complutense University of Madrid. He has published several
novels, including El camaleón sobre la alfombra [The
chameleon on the rug] (1974; Galdós Prize, 1975), Calima
[Misty heat] (1978), Los dioses de sí mismos [Gods of
themselves] (1989, Plaza y Janés International Novel Prize),
Vargas Llosa. El vicio de escribir [Vargas Llosa or writing as a
vice] (1991; Alfaguara, 2002), Los años que fuimos Marilyn
[The year we were Marilyn] (1995) and Cuba en el corazón
[Cuba at heart] (1998).
On Thursday 3 April Juan José Armas Marcelo delivered a
lecture at FCM headquarters titled On mestizo writing. A
personal experience. In the course of this lecture, the author
reviewed his concept of miscegenation as an ideological
backdrop for a certain outlook on life. In our times, the halfbreed
is no longer an oddity.
The author sustained that writers have a public mission. He
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