The history of Juana Perea and her family has been collected in a book by Jon Artano

2023-10-26 18:27:23

Thursday, October 26, 2023, 18:27

Comment

Copy link

WhatsApp

Facebook

X

LinkedIn

Telegram

On Sunday, October 29, it will be three years since Juana Perea Plata was killed in Colombia. This woman of Basque origin left home as a teenager and had several adventures in the Caribbean, Hungary and Afghanistan. He was so intent on fulfilling his dream of building a hotel that he was kidnapped by members of a narco-paramilitary group and killed with three gunshots.

Jon Artano has collected the story of this amazing woman in the book ‘Juana’, as well as that of her family. EITB journalist Zesto won the Tene Mujika 2022 Scholarship, which rewards non-fiction projects about the recent history of the Basque Country, sponsored by Deba City Hall and Elkar publishing house. With the project called ‘Anderik Ande’, Artano aimed to tell the stories of Basques who have lived in America and some Americans who live in the Basque Country. The book published by Elkar publishing house is the result of several months of research work.

Artano worked as a correspondent in Colombia between 2016 and 2019, and after winning the scholarship, “I took a leave of absence from radio and went to the Andes mountains to look for stories”, explained the journalist at the book launch event. He visited six countries and came back from that trip with “stories to tell”. Both Artano and Xabier Mendigure’s editor realized that Juana Perea had “strength” and “intensity” among them all, and in the end the journalist dedicated the entire book to this woman and her family.

Artano wanted to know why Juana was killed, and he traveled to the place where the crime took place, spoke to witnesses and looked through the investigation documents. He also talked to his family, and then he learned that his grandfather, Andrés Perea Gallaga, had been a confidant of President Jose Antonio Agirre, who, seeing that the Civil War was going on, had asked him to withdraw the government treasury from the Basque Country. Finally, in 1937 Juana’s grandfather escaped from Bilbao and arrived in Bogotá with his family.

In the book, Artano tells the history of Juana and her family, in an “entertaining way”, but at the same time with rigor, because he has contrasted the data collected with several historians.

Comment Report a bug