Ospina's General Aspects

Literary Arts: William Ospina

"What are the keys to understanding the history of Colombia and its Latin American neighbours? Perhaps the answers lie in the history itself and the ways in which events have been interpreted from one generation to the next. To that end, the Colombian writer William Ospina revisits scenes from the first years of the newly colonized region, drawing compelling comparisons with contemporary reality."

"To say that the Conquest only unleashed the sick, the mad, and the evil is to caricature it…no doubt there was some of that, but at the same time and, with similar persuasiveness, someone less exasperated could argue that with it came defenders, courageous people and sometimes even saints, and this too would be true…it would be more accurate to say that with the Conquest came the whole of the human condition."

"I don't think we've learned everything we had to learn […] I believe that the conflict persists. In a way one could say that we are still in the midst of the conquest of the Americas and that we have not yet learned the lessons of that conquest. I write these books [in order] to learn something […] If humankind could find better ways of relating to other cultures and to nature—because we still haven't learned either of those things."

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Ospina's Biography

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