My writer and buddy, Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes, who has died aged 72, was a poet, singer, feminist, educational, animal lover and political activist, who had a fierce ardour for all times and a robust sense of justice.
In 2016, on the age of 65, Consuelo retired from the Open College, the place she had lectured in social sciences and Spanish since 1994, to delve into the world of publishing. She went again to school to check for a fourth diploma – having already accomplished a PGCE – in English – at Concepción College, Chile, a grasp’s in sociology and girls’s research at Lancaster College within the UK and a PhD in girls’s research, additionally at Lancaster, she lastly took a grasp’s in publishing on the College of Derby.
This later led Consuelo to discovered Victorina Press in the summertime of 2017. It has printed about 50 titles up to now, a lot of which have gained or been shortlisted for prizes.
Born in Santiago de Chile, the eldest daughter of Jorge Rivera, an air drive pilot, and Mercedes Fuentes, a housewife, Consuelo attended the Lorenzo Arenas faculty in Concepción, leaving with the best grades in her 12 months. She spent her adolescence in Cañete in southern Chile, which she cherished due to the lakes, mountains and volcanoes, which occasionally erupted, in her phrases, “right into a thousand million tongues of fireside”.
Consuelo certified as an English instructor at Concepción College, and had two sons, Christian and Jorge, together with her husband, Pedro Vasquez. The couple divorced, and Consuelo got here to England in 1992 with Jorge to begin a brand new life, having survived imprisonment and torture in the course of the Pinochet regime.
The difficulties she confronted strengthened her resolve to publish books that have been numerous in type and style and accessible to all. The ethos of “bibliodiversity” steered Victorina Press, making certain a variety of voices are printed and heard, together with these of immigrants and former political prisoners.
Consuelo lived close to Uttoxeter together with her life associate, Lynda Birke, whom she met in 1998 at Lancaster College. That they had been advised about one another by a mutual buddy in Chile, and eventually met when Lynda gave a lecture on girls’s research. She stepped down as CEO of Victorina in 2023 as a consequence of ailing well being, and the press is now run by her son Jorge and his associate Sophie.
She is survived by Lynda, her sons, Jorge and Christian, 4 grandchildren and 5 siblings: Rosa, Nancy, Juan-Carlos, Jorge and Rodrigo.
