“For anyone it is a secret that Guatemala, and Central America itself, have enough challenges” in freedom of expression, said its director festival, its director, Nicaraguan Claudia Neira, referring to the authoritarian measures of some governments of the region.
The festival will be held in the Guatemalan capital and in two locations of the indigenous population from May 19 to 26, 2025, with an inaugural talk by the Spanish singer -songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat.
He was founded in 2013 by the Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez, Cervantes Award 2017, exiled in Spain and stripped of his nationality by the government of Daniel Ortega.
Neira explained that the presence of the Guatemalan journalist was scheduled José Rubén Zamora, But on Monday he was returned to prison after a judge revoked him the house arrest he had since October.
The Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of money laundering, but international human rights organizations assure that it is a case of persecution against the press for his complaints of corruption acts in the previous right government.
“I hope we can count on your face -to -face participation and not through a video” from jail, Neira added.
ANDn the meeting will also be discussed about journalism and migration, At a time that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, undertook a attack against illegal migration and pressed some countries in Central America to receive deported foreigners who are later repatriated.
“In these convulsive moments, it is also fundamental” to talk about “migration,” Neira added.
During the festival workshops, book presentations, concerts and talks about democracy, human rights, cinema and gastronomy will be held.
The 2025 edition will be dedicated to the late Guatemalan Miguel Ángel AsturiasNobel Prize for Literature in 1967, and it is the second time that it is held in Guatemala, the first was in 2022.