The Embassy of Chile commemorates Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes for her contribution to cultural relations between Chile and the United Kingdom
On Tuesday 31st of January the Embassy held a ceremony to commemorate poet, academic, editor, feminist and activist Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes, for her remarkable contribution to cultural Relations between Chile and the United Kingdom.
Consuelo has a Master’s Degree in Sociology and Gender, as well as in Literary Publishing and a PhD in Women’s Studies. She has worked as an academic, poet, literary editor and human rights activist. She came to live in the UK in 1992 to teach Spanish and Women’s Studies at the University of Lancaster.
Before her arrival to the UK, Consuelo was a political activist and had been a victim of torture under the Augusto Pinochet regime. She was also the founder of LEA, the first public lesbian group in Concepción, Chile.
In 2016, at the age of 65, she retired from her academic position at the Open University and decided to start a business in publishing. She returned to the classroom to study her Master’s Degree in Publishing and in 2017 she founded the Victorina Press publishing House. Through Victorina Press, which is named in honour of her mother, Consuelo has kept her Latin American roots alive by publishing books related to our country and continent, translating several of the publications into Spanish. She was also one of the founders of the collective Las Juanas, a group of Latin American writers in the United Kingdom.
Various people from the local literary world, relatives, friends, British artists and members of the Chilean community in London attended the event at the Embassy.
The translator, writer and critic Adam Feinstein, the Welsh writer Rhiannon Lewis, and the Chilean poet Eduardo Embry spoke publicly of Consuelo's legacy. The act culminated in a musical performance by the Chilean-British collective Quimantú.
