With more than 700 people enjoying the concert of the Afro-Brazilian group Horöya in the Huanchaca Ruins, the tenth edition of the Identidades International Performing Arts Festival in the Atacama Desert ended yesterday.
“This was an unforgettable party, we celebrated these 10 years of cultural work in the region. Identidades Festival is consolidated as a space to welcome and disseminate world cultures and also as a place of meeting and dialogue between generations and diverse identities,” said Alejandra Rojas, director of Identidades Festival.
The closing night was marked by the sound of Höröyá, a band formed in the city of São Paulo, made up of eleven members, including Brazilians, Senegalese and Guineans. The Höröyá Group, influenced by traditional cultures from West African countries such as Guinea, Mali and Senegal; offered a show marked by diverse sounds such as samba and touches of candomblé; afrobeat from Nigeria and Ghana and African-American musicality, such as funk and jazz.
Regarding the 10th edition of Identities, the Vice President of Corporate Affairs of Escondida | BHP, Abel Benítez, said: “The The Antofagasta community joined this festival, one of the longest running in the country, being active protagonists in each of its stagings and interventions. This year the festival offered us a program composed of eight high-level shows by companies from Rapa Nui, Brazil, Peru and Chile, and where through different artistic languages we were able to reflect on the importance of identity in the construction of societies.”
Identidades Festival is a project of the La Huella Teatro Cultural Corporation, presented by Escondida | BHP. It is an initiative financed by the Regional Government of Antofagasta, with resources from the National Regional Development Fund in the amount of 79,984,801 FNDR 8% Culture line, year 2024, approved by the Regional Council of Antofagasta. It is a project financed by the National Fund for the Promotion and Development of the Performing Arts, call 2024 and covered by the Donations Law of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage. Identidades Festival is sponsored by UNESCO and has been recognized by Marca Chile de Imagen País.
Identidades Festival, in its anniversary edition, once again reserved a place in its program for a show framed in the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, promoted by UNESCO. This occasion was Te Mana Hakaâra. The power that remains; from the Antofagasta company La Huella Teatro.
Between October 5 and 12, Identidades Festival brought together more than five thousand people around the performing arts in Antofagasta, San Pedro de Atacama and Baquedano. Identidades Festival was dreamed up in 2014 by the Antofagasta company La Huella Teatro, when it celebrated 10 years of life and creation of an identity theater, deeply connected to the human and geographical landscape of northern Chile. “The objective at that time was to expand universes to share and link with creators from other territories, whose searches also revolve around research, memory and appreciation of the cultural diversity of peoples,” added Alejandra Rojas, who emphasized in which, likewise, the desire arose to create barter, as reciprocal exchanges between the invited artists and the local artists, in a way to enhance the encounter and friendship between creators.
Thus, in 2015 the first edition of Identidades Festival was held as a challenge, beyond creation, now also involving curatorial, mediation, training and links with communities. The next edition of Identidades Festival is scheduled for November 2025.
