Bolivian Vice President Inaugurates Casa de las Americas Literary Award CUBA, January 17th, 2011.- Casa de las Americas has marked the lives of generations of Americans who are committed to the future of their peoples, said Bolivia’s Vice-President Álvaro García Linera at the inauguration of the 2011 Casa de las Americas Literary Award. Garcia Limera, who is recognized as one of the great American thinkers is a special guest to inaugurate the 52 Casa de las Americas Literary Awards that will wrap up on January 27 with the award ceremony in the genres of novel, story, testimonial literature, literary and artistic study and Brazilian literature. He recalled that in the 60's and 70's, when dictatorships prevailed in the area, the Casa de las Americas books, that circulated clandestinely, fed the spirit and commitment of many young people, who through them were aware of the revolutionary experiences in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Uruguay and other Latin American nations. He stressed that the institution is not only a meeting place for Latin American and Caribbean countries, but it is also a place to make visible the cultural production of all these people and from it radiates to the world. He also described it as a large avant-garde workshop where the Latin American literary boom and new trends in music, literature and art found its own laboratory. The Bolivian Vice-President made a historical account of the indigenous peasant movement in his country since the dawn of colonialism to the present, when the government headed by Evo Morales summarized the hopes of justice in a multi-ethnic nation which comprises 36 indigenous cultures. The opening ceremony was attended by Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto Jiménez. Roberto Fernandez Retamar, president of the Casa de las Americas, highlighted the commitment to growth of the institution, this time with the new curriculum of indigenous cultures across the continent, including the U.S. and Canada. He said that this year's award is dedicated to the centenary of the Peruvian intellectual José María Arguedas, an expert on the Andean-Quechua world who had a close relationship with Casa de las Americas. (Cubaminrex - ACN) |