The Central America festival counts, (CAC2025), One of the most important meetings in the literary world He started for the second time in Guatemala, on Monday, May 19. Totonicapán and San Juan Comalapa They were selected for the first activities with a dialogue entitled Social movements and political transformation: resistance and democracy in Guatemala and a dialogue table about Memory peoples: art, identity and resistance. In addition, the presentation was had in Guatemala City of the book A silence full of murmurs, of Gioconda Belli.
The morning of Tuesday 20, the writer Ariel Florencia Richards and the poet Nadia López visited national schools to bring literature closer to the new generations. More similar activities are expected during the rest of the week.
The official opening ceremony was held on Tuesday night at the Lux Theater facilities. The President of the Republic, Bernardo Arévalo participated; the Minister of Culture and Sports, Liwy Grazioso Sierra; Michelle Muschett, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP); and Thomas Peyker, ambassador of the European Union, among other personalities.
Sergio Díaz-Granados, Executive President of CAF-Banco de Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, commented that Guatemala is now a member country of this institution. For her part, the Spanish ambassador, María Clara Girbau Ronda, highlighted the presence of Spanish personalities at the Festival, including Joan Manuel Serrat; the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; and Pepa Well, director of the newspaper The country.
The president and founder of the festival, Sergio Ramírez; the vice president, Gioconda Belli; and the executive director, Claudia Neira Bermúdez, as well as special guests. The opening ceremony began with a series of images of the participants, captured by Daniel Mordzinski, known for his photographic art in the literary world.
Central America Festival tells: a meeting of thinkers
During his speech, Ramírez said that this festival “is a meeting of thinkers, writers, artists, thinkers, journalists and free and creative spirits.” He also celebrated returning to Guatemala at this festival that is being done in exile. “After being forced to abandon our original headquarters in Managua by the exclusive and arbitrary force of the new improvised communist dictatorship in Managua,” he said.
“The essence of a festival like this is dialogue,” said the writer and said: “The public wants to know not only about our books but how we see the world and the utopias that we want to build on and off the pages.”
The story cover award was also delivered to Felipitoof the Honduran Alejandro René Carrasco. The theme that developed a subject about migration. The writer received recognition from writer Gioconda Belli, vice president of the festival.
The legacy of Asturias in Spain
“It is satisfactory to be part of this festival for the possibilities of spaces for dialogue and critical thinking that represents an act of faith in the word,” said Grazious. This festival is dedicated to Miguel Ángel Asturias, the only Nobel Prize for Literature that Guatemala has and that rests at the Pére-Lachaise cemetery, In France. In June 2024, At the end of his death, it was reported that the preparations for the return of the remains of Asturias to Guatemala were in process.
“Literature is a right … I want the words of this festival to remain in the streets, in schools, in the kitchens and that the power of the word continues marking roads where there was silence before,” said Grazioso.
One of the most symbolic moments was at the moment that Raquel Celaya, cultural director at The Cervantes Institute He received from Miguel Ángel Asturias Amado, son of the Guatemalan Nobel Prize Miguel Ángel Asturias, a legacy of the writer, who will be deposited in the Caja de las Lyrics of the Cervantes Institute, in Madrid Spain. The box number will be 1273.
“Receive this legacy symbolically in the 1273 box number, one of the flow boxes that instead of saving money and jewelry, today they protect things with value. Today they protect inside the living memory of our language,” Celaya said.
Asturias Amado delivered Treasures of Asturias in the name of the Miguel Ángel Asturias Foundation. He assures that his father’s work is currently more read for the work that is being done from recent editions published in the country and the support of Filgua.
This legacy is composed of letters from his mother or sent to Miguel de Unamuno about the Popular University and asking for support for his campaign against illiteism; It also includes a public deed signed by him from his stage as a lawyer, one of the first drafts of the president, as well as the first edition of Legends of Guatemala (Spain, 1930. Editorial Oriente), a copy of Aclasán, Pantomima dedicated to Federico García Lorca and Annals of the Xahil, of the Cakchiqueles Indians, a translated book while studying at the University of La Sorbonne in 1937.
It also includes photocopies of documents and a handwritten draft about the generation of 20. All these pieces will be transferred to Madrid, headquarters of the Cervantes Institute, which houses the literary treasures of prominent Central American authors such as Rubén Darío, Ernesto Cardenal, Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli, Horacio Castellanos Moya and Rodrigo Rey Rosa.
This will allow the writer of Mr. PresidentE is part of the group of Central American authors whose legacy remains in the box of letters, such as Rubén Darío, Ernesto Cardenal, Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli, Horacio Castellanos Moya and the Guatemalan Rodrigo Rey Rosa.
King Rosa, for example, keeps one of its first stories, delivery, as well as one of the notebooks that form The human materialin which their first visits to the General Archive of Central America, in February 2007, in search of memories of work of the National Police, which he found, but mutilated.
For his part, Arévalo said that he celebrates the opportunity that this festival offers, “Cac gives us to think about the country we want. When I say country, I think in rural, regional. A country that its doors to the world. A country where conversation, the exchange of knowledge, reflection and aesthetic enjoyment are available to everyone.”
What is the box of letters?
The headquarters of the Cervantes Institute occupies an old bank. The building in which we are was the Bank of the Río de la Plata, founded in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century.
Then, the building was occupied by different banks and ended up owned by the Spanish State, which decided to establish the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute.
Some historical corners of the beginning of the last century are preserved that are characteristic of bank architecture. One of those sites is the great flow of flows. They were rental boxes where customers had their section. There they kept family documents, jewels, money and secrets they wanted to protect.
“The decision was made to transform that large money rental box into a box of culture and letters. And that is what we call our Lyrics boxwhich has a double purpose. The first is to affirm that the great wealth of a community is its culture; The second, bet on the future and receive the inheritance of the past, “says the poet and writer Luis García Montero.
In those old rental boxes we receive legacies from great authors, Cervantes Awards, film directors, actresses and outstanding actors, musicians, sculptors. “We have received the legacy of Gabriel García Márquez, Alicia Alonso – the great Cuban classic ballet dancer – Luis García Berlanga and many writers, such as Rodrigo Rey Rosa or Sergio Ramírez,” explains the director of this institution that Nation in the 1990s.