Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez performs this text, which can be seen in the Symphony Hall of the Palacio de Formación y Congresos
The Fuerteventura Book Fair will host the play ‘El invencible verano de Liliana’ next Saturday, 17 October, based on the book by Cristina Rivera, one of the most influential writers on the current Hispanic literary scene and a Pulitzer Prize winner for this very text, which is now being staged by Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez.
The play, adapted by Amaranta Osorio, will be performed at 9.30pm in the Symphony Hall of the Palacio de Formación y Congresos de Fuerteventura. Admission is free, with tickets available in advance from www.culturafuerteventura.es.
Liliana Rivera Garza was killed by her ex-boyfriend on 16 July 1990. The killer fled and has never been caught. Liliana would have remained just one more of the anonymous women murdered by men in Mexico, were it not for her sister, the writer Cristina Rivera Garza, who, thirty years after her death, found the strength to go through the archives and documents Liliana had left behind. After an arduous writing process, she restored her sister’s memory in 2021 with ‘El invencible verano de Liliana’, a memoir that the Festival de Otoño is now bringing to the stage with celebrated Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez, adapted as a monologue by playwright Amaranta Osorio and directed by Juan Carlos Fischer.
The play recounts the life of the sister of the writer who won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography for this work. Since its publication, ‘El invencible verano de Liliana’ has received the José Donoso, Nuevo León, Alfonso Reyes, Xavier Villaurrutia, Rodolfo Walsh and Mazatlán literary prizes.
It is one of the greatest achievements of the writer, one of the most influential authors in contemporary Hispanic-American literature, who has published ten novels and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her novel ‘Nadie me verá llorar’ (1999) was praised by Carlos Fuentes as one of the finest works of Spanish-language literature from the late twentieth century.
‘El invencible verano de Liliana’ reconstructs Liliana Rivera Garza’s intimate and public past through her own words, thoughts and doubts, drawn from notes, phrases and diaries compiled by her sister.
We witness the reconstruction of the events leading up to the murder of the young university student she was at the time, a story that reflects a system riven by violence that has silenced thousands of women.
With sensitivity and resolve, the staging of ‘El invencible verano de Liliana’ invites audiences to remember, to be moved, and to refuse to look away. Like the book that inspired it, this play is an act of love, a way of telling a woman’s story in her own voice and of honouring her time on this earth. It is an exercise in mourning and a political act of reclaiming speech, dignity and justice.
The Book Fair is organised by the Centro Bibliotecario Insular, under the Department of Culture of the Cabildo de Fuerteventura, with the collaboration of the Instituto Canario de Desarrollo Cultural of the Government of the Canary Islands. The regional government’s Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare, Equality, Youth, Children and Family is also taking part.
