Four days of crime

Opening

Opening Ceremony

Welcome remarks by representatives of the Government of Spain, Centro Cultural de España, Universidad Diego Portales, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the festival curatorial team.

Recognition

Santiago Negro 2026 Recognition

A tribute to director, screenwriter, journalist and writer Carlos Pinto for his contribution to the circulation of the genre in audiovisual and written media.

ParticipantsCarlos Pinto

ModeratorÁlvaro Bisama

Opening

Congress Opening

Remarks by representatives of the University, Spain and Centro Cultural de España.

Opening address

From green to black: Costa Rica and Tico noir

ParticipantsDaniel Quirós

Academic panel

Panel 1: Forms, genealogies and boundaries of crime narrative

1. Parecido a la felicidad (1959): a reading between the coming-of-age novel and the spy thriller

   José Martínez Rippes · Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

2. Mapping the anthology of the Latin American crime short story

   Luis Valenzuela Prado · Universidad Andrés Bello

3. The sound of darkness: the identity weight of spoken language in audiovisual noir

   Valeria Vargas · Investigadora independiente

4. The Carretera Austral as crime

   Martín Gubbins · Instituto de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Coffee break

Conversation

Where evil dwells: every form of darkness

ParticipantsAlicia Escardó, Cecilia Ríos, Iris García Cuevas

Workshop

Creative writing workshop

ParticipantsNicolás Ferraro

Conversation

The map of crime

Organised by Fondecyt Regular No. 1251796, Territorial narratives of crime in the Latin American short story (2000–2024).

ParticipantsAlicia Escardó, Kike Ferrari, Pablo Toro

ModeratorLuis Valenzuela Prado

Keynote lecture

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: On Ireland, America, and Mystery Fiction

ParticipantsJohn Connolly

Academic panel

Panel 2: Crime, memory and institutional violence

1. Hidden crimes: the legacy of institutional crimes in crime fiction in Chile and Ireland

   Kate Quinn · University of Galway

2. Thirty years after Estrella distante: a pioneering anti-detective novel of Chilean trauma

   Alicia Mercado-Harvey · New College of Florida

3. Unanswered letters: narratives of grief in the face of institutional military violence

   Claudia Leiva Valero · Programa Iberescena

4. Twice outside the law: crime, truth and motherhood in Patricia Andrade’s Fallo dividido

   Maried Cervantes · Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Coffee break

Academic panel

Panel 3: Narco-fiction, bodies and marginalities

1. Living at the edge of the margins: dissident bodies and desire in twentieth-century Latin American narco-literature

   Héctor Parejas Fierro · Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

2. Feminine narco-aesthetics and the performativity of power on TikTok

   Inés Solans-Roa · Universidad de Santiago de Chile

3. Narrating anomie: anti-formation and defeat in Carla Retamal Pacheco’s Diablas

   Ainhoa Vásquez Mejías · Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María

4. Petty crimes and rastrillos, the torn fabric of present-day Montevideo society: Cecilia Ríos and her construction of crime in Caballo regalado (2025)

   Andrea Aquino · CFE, ANEP, Instituto de Profesores Artigas

Conversation

Defeats, losses and what remains: Ferrari + Ferraro

ParticipantsKike Ferrari, Nicolás Ferraro

Open lecture

Open lecture in tribute to Roberto Bolaño

ParticipantsJohn Connolly

Conversation

Drawing resentment; writing evil: forms and formats of noir

ParticipantsGonzalo Oyanedel, Rodrigo Ramos Bañados, Cecilia Ríos

ModeratorGabriel Weinstein

Tribute

Tribute to Sergio Gómez (1962–2026)

ParticipantsGonzalo Martínez, Francisco Ortega

ModeratorJulieta Gómez

Academic panel

Panel 4: Cartographies of crime and the spaces of noir

1. Savage cities. Marginal neighbourhoods in crime fiction

   David J. Knutson · Xavier University

2. Mapping crime. Researching noir between the spatial humanities and the boundaries of fiction

   Xaquín Núñez Sabarís · Universidade do Minho

3. Crime as symptom: technopolitical order and spatial inversions in Boris Quercia’s dystopian novel Electrocante

   Juan Rosillo y Felipe Uribe · Columbia University y Universidad de Santiago de Chile; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Academic panel

Panel 5: Society, identities and representations of crime

1. Carlos Salem’s Brigada de los Apóstoles tetralogy: an X-ray of Spanish society

   Paula Martínez Domínguez · Université de Tours

2. Tinta roja (2000) and the reproduction of criollo subjectivities in the era of Peru’s chicha newspapers

   Sha Sha Gutiérrez · Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

3. The francesitas and the image of Argentine prostitution in the first third of the twentieth century. White-slave trafficking between Europe and Buenos Aires in three texts

   Juan Manuel Zurita · Universidad de Concepción

Conversation

Dabuten: fiction after defeat

ParticipantsPaco Gómez Escribano

ModeratorDavid J. Knutson

Workshop

Creative writing workshop

ParticipantsKike Ferrari

Conversation

The territories of crime: edges and borders

ParticipantsIris García Cuevas, Claudia Readi Silva, Paco Gómez Escribano

ModeratorCarvacho Alfaro

Conversation

40 years of Heredia

ParticipantsRamón Díaz Eterovic, Nicolás Ferraro, Daniel Quirós, Julia Guzmán Watine

ModeratorAna María Barra

Closing Ceremony