Books
Marco Avilés –one of the leading representatives of Etiqueta Negra magazine, perhaps the greatest school of journalism in Latin America– has stirred the minds of his country with this provocative book of seductive prose. What is “a cholo”? How many layers of racism does that word cover? Aren’t we all cholos, immigrants, a mixture, a mestizaje, more or less Molotov cocktails? To reflect that condition, the human one, this book hybridizes the journey through the geography of Peru, mixing the interview, the profile and the autobiography. Particularly memorable, in fact, are the introduction and the epilogue, where the author, who was born in the Andes and now lives in the United States, gives personal keys to understanding his obsession with racism that this book deconstructs and denounces. -Jorge Carrión. The New York Times
I don't know if Marco Avilés is the best of our current chroniclers, but I am sure that he is the one who assumes the greatest emotional commitment to the beings –usually marginal and forgotten– that he portrays in his texts. This impression, generated by reading the solid chronicles of "De donde venimos los cholos" (2016) is corroborated by the review of his first book, "Día de visita", originally published in 2007 and reissued a few weeks ago. Avilés took on a great challenge in his debut: to rescue the voices of the women imprisoned in the Santa Monica prison, which we could classify as hellish with good press. Many television reports about this prison strive to paint it as a benign place, full of beautiful foreign women who have fallen into disgrace, where the inmates dedicate themselves to organizing internal beauty contests and festivals that show them happy, fun, almost reconciled with the world. All of this, of course, is false, and Avilés proves it to us with a crude dose of reality that never neglects the profound empathy that the author feels for his mistreated interlocutors. -José Carlos Yrigoyen. El Comercio
«Marco Avilés opens No Soy Tu Cholo with his visit to a school in Maine, where he is invited to talk about his experience as an immigrant (…). The surprise in his audience (wasn’t it true that only Latinos migrated and settled in a country that was not their own? First World citizens also cross borders in search of a better future) provides a starting point for the disturbing question about skin color and privilege, both in Peru and in the United States, and how that combination motivates and at the same time impedes the essential human impulse to migrate.» -Susan Harris. Words Without Borders
Recent courses + conferences
CUNY. Master of Journalism. 2021-24
University of Texas-Austin / MOOC. 2021
Texts and contexts
University of Pennsylvania- 2022
El Alto in Raimundo Quispe's narrative
JALLA 2024. U. Católica de Chile
Migration and Return
Brooklyn Public Library. June 2024
A World Without Indians
U. Católica de Chile. April 2024