Walter Gonzáles had doubts: he thought Jorge González was not a good singer and had been told he was “kind of stubborn.” “But the public loved them and time taught me that I was wrong,” says the former Peruvian radio producer, organizer of Los Prisioneros’ first visit to Lima. Gonzáles organized two concerts in Peru, which not only impacted the public and the underground rock scene in that country: they were also a surprise for the band. The trio from San Miguel landed in the Peruvian capital in 1987 with their second album, Pateando piedras, but their first hits arrived a year earlier: “We came to promote and found 14,000 people who knew all the songs,” recalls the vocalist. Los Prisioneros’ songs entered from Buenos Aires, on a copy of La voz de los 80 that a Peruvian student at the UBA, Jorge Luis Luján, sent to his friend Angel Ríos, a DJ of a rock program. That was the spark that ignited the relationship between the group and the Peruvian fans, fueled by pirated cassettes, provocative interviews, and their first concerts, under the watchful eye of the Chilean dictatorship. Based on more than fifty interviews, extensive documentation, and unpublished archives, Alejandro Tapia complements his biography Ya viene la fuerza with this lively, agile, and detailed chronicle that follows the band’s footsteps in Peru.
The future is often a source of uncertainty, especially in days when the idea of progress no longer seems guaranteed. “But there is nothing more unsettling than an uncertain past,” writes French philosopher Dorian Astor. “There is no comparison: the question ‘What is going to happen?’ is less dizzying than the question ‘What has happened?’” Ultimately, “the uncertainty of the past is the panic of origin.” Editor and biographer of Nietzsche, the author reflects on the search for certainty and uncertainty, which far from rationality seem driven by passion. “It is not doubt but certainty that drives one crazy,” is one of the book’s epigraphs, taken from Nietzsche. In a world full of indeterminacies, Astor rejects absolute certainty, its claim to superiority, and defends the passion for uncertainty. He recognizes in every human being a small despot who clings to their certainties as if to a faith and warns that this path leads to all kinds of fanaticisms. He analyzes the relationship between trust and certainty, contrasts the scientist with the believer, and concludes: “I am increasingly attentive, restless, doubtful. I wait. And curiously, with a kind of unjustifiable faith, I like that attentive waiting, that calm restlessness.”
A rock is heading to Earth from the depths of the cosmos: an inert body that can destroy living worlds. Meanwhile, monsters hide in the depths of the sea. Captain Rayén Vestalafken, in command of the scientific exploration ship Buscamares, leaves Talcahuano Bay heading south. After 14 hours of navigation, she is ordered to return urgently. At dawn, a great glow crosses the sky: an eruption of bright particles rises from the south toward the stratosphere and a huge wave took shape on the horizon. Two days later, amid the fog, they begin to spot another vessel: “We encountered a strange ship, with no name on its hull or flag on its mast, and that seems to be more than one hundred and fifty years old,” she noted in the logbook. Upon boarding the ship, they found a tablet and inside it a file titled Reportaje Casa Faro. Thus begins this dazzling visual novel, Félix Vega’s debut in storytelling: a science fiction story composed like a game of Russian dolls: stories within stories accompanied by drawings where he displays his virtuosity in drawing. Elegant and beautiful edition for this new work in the personal cosmology of the author of Juan Buscamares.
