Narrativas Revolucionarias: The Language of Memory, Presence and Power - Rossy Lima, Edgar Castro Zapata and Héctor Rendón
At the Hay Festival Dallas Forum, Narrativas Revolucionarias unfolded as a shared meditation on story and history, exploring how both shape how we remember and how we construct our identity. Presented in collaboration with Latino Book Review, the panel brought together three voices whose paths intersected around the idea that to tell one’s story is to reclaim existence; and in this act, lies our revolution.
Héctor “Vale” Rendón, a scholar and host of Latino Book Review Presents, guided this dialogue as both facilitator and communication expert, laying out the conversation like a tablecloth for a community banquet. He invited the audience to consider how stories shape our collective understanding—how identity, history, and belonging are all mediated by who gets to speak and who is heard; a moderation that felt both intimate and encompassing.
Rossy Lima, poet, scholar, and Executive Director of Latino Book Review, opened with a reflection on authorship and agency, emphasizing the urgency of telling our own stories as a way to create community and empower each other. For her, writing is not only creative but essential, a lifeline, a way of existing in the world unapologetically. In this sense, when we write our stories, we take back the narrative that has been told about us and define ourselves. Her words carried the calm conviction of someone who has lived the experience she described.
Héctor “Vale” Rendón, a scholar and host of Latino Book Review Presents, guided this dialogue as both facilitator and communication expert, laying out the conversation like a tablecloth for a community banquet. He invited the audience to consider how stories shape our collective understanding—how identity, history, and belonging are all mediated by who gets to speak and who is heard; a moderation that felt both intimate and encompassing.
Rossy Lima, poet, scholar, and Executive Director of Latino Book Review, opened with a reflection on authorship and agency, emphasizing the urgency of telling our own stories as a way to create community and empower each other. For her, writing is not only creative but essential, a lifeline, a way of existing in the world unapologetically. In this sense, when we write our stories, we take back the narrative that has been told about us and define ourselves. Her words carried the calm conviction of someone who has lived the experience she described.
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The discussion further deepened as Edgar Castro Zapata, historian and President of Fundación Zapata, brought history into the present. He spoke of how collective memory is sustained not by institutions but by people who continue to tell the truth of their ancestors. As the great-grandson of Emiliano Zapata, he carries more than lineage; he carries a mission to keep that legacy alive. To this day, the figure of Zapata still shapes movements for justice and dignity. “Zapata lives,” he reflected, because every act of resistance, every defense of the poor, carries his spirit forward. His voice grounded the conversation in continuity, where remembering becomes a moral act.
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By the time the session ended, the attendees, who included several community organizers, asked for recommendations on how they could incorporate these practices within their communities. The conversation had done what the best ones do, it sowed seeds of action and hope. Narrativas Revolucionarias was a panel that asks us to carry our stories into the future, ensuring that both personal and collective memory remain alive, spoken, and unafraid.
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