“We meet today, still saddened by the great loss of human life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the awareness that the danger is still present and that we have yet to regain normalcy in our lives ”, he introduced Raul Padilla at the opening ceremony of the 35th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL Guadalajara), of which he is president, which began with the unfortunate news about the death of the Spanish writer Almudena Grandes.
For this reason, Padilla López expressed his regret for the death of the author of works such as “The ages of Lulú”, “The frozen heart” and “Los aires difficult”, “a great friend of this FIL, whom we will miss and honor”, he said to request a minute of silence.
In this ceremony, which was held in person at Expo Guadalajara, the presidium was also made up of Andrea Gisela Ortiz Perea, Minister of Culture of Peru; the Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramirez, Ricardo Villanueva Lomelí, rector general of the University of Guadalajara; Diamela Eltit, winner of the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages 2021; Lorenzo Cordova, president of the Council of the National Electoral Institute, and Marisol Schulz Manaut, director of the fair, as well as Juan Luis Arzoz Arbide, president of the National Chamber of the Publishing Industry (Cani) and local authorities.
There, Raúl Padilla welcomed Peru as Guest of Honor for the second time under the editorial meeting and said that “this year when we meet again, we assume what we have learned. FIL’s nature is face-to-face, but the digital route is and will continue to be its window to the world ”.
“They have tried to suppress their link with the university”
The president of the fair declared that this meeting “has had to face the siege of the public power, from trying to suppress its link with the university and turn it into a state fair or banning books and authors with uncomfortable ideas, to cutting support for the cultural program sometimes totally, as is the case this year ”.
He said that the fair is a symbol of university autonomy, “and that autonomy is synonymous with independence from public power and freedom of thought. Those who seek to undermine it are allied with obscurantism and despotism, they go against the law and society itself (…) they may cross out paragraphs, tear out pages, silence writers or dismiss from their position those who defend reading for mere pleasure, but what they will not achieve is to control what we read, to prevent the letters from awakening thought, stimulating intelligence and igniting criticism ”.
Also, in a ceremony in which he highlighted the absence of federal authorities, Padilla López said: “possibly there will be talk in the following hours or days of presences or absences in this opening ceremony or in this edition of the fair, although we celebrate and thank those present and we regret the reasons that prevent us from the attendance of those who are absent, these are still anecdotes. What summons us here are the words, the ideas, which allow us human beings to transcend our differences and cultivate the best of our spirit ”.
For his part, the rector of the UdeG stated: “as an academic institution we have been open to dialogue over allegations, accusations, cuts, even regrettable direct offenses by the state governor. We really do not like to fight, I do not like to fight, I have always preferred to build than destroy, but as university students we are obliged to defend our autonomy. This is for all of us, the university students of today and of the past, a historical responsibility ”.
He added that freedom of thought “today is under threat, today freedom is in danger and it must be said clearly. There have always been those who want us to believe that they are masters of the truth. Thats nothing new. That those who do not bow down to them are the villains of history, that you have to choose between black and white, that you have to choose between good and bad. There is nothing more false than this dichotomy, because, to begin with, all human beings are good and bad at the same time ”.
This edition of FIL Guadalajara has the participation of more than 600 writers from 46 countries, as well as the representation of 37 nations with more than a thousand professionals and 1,500 publishers that will exhibit more than 24,000 titles, as well as a program extended to two more venues, the Metropolitan Pavilion and the UdeG University Cultural Center.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx