Tuesday began with the lecture by Ernesto Barraza, playwright, theatre director and college professor from Perú. The title for his talk has been as follows: “The Unfinished Battle: Bolognesi in Arica: the Peruvian nation project nowadays and the fiasco of the War of the Pacific”.

Dr Barraza, professor at the South Scientific University in his home country, has discussed Bolognesi in Arica (2013), by Peruvian playwright Alonso Alegría. This piece depicts the uncertainty during the last days before the Battle of Arica, in the War of the Pacific (1789-1882) which Peru and Bolivia fought against Chile. The talk approaches Alegría’s work as an introspective revision of the war, which allows us to understand aspects of Peru’s current politics and national identity project, taking the country’s situation at the end of the 19th century as a starting point.