Noticias
Inauguration of Guadalajara International Book Fair 2015
December 02, 2015The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL, for its acronym in Spanish) is a celebration for people, readers and authors that support the word, dialogue and reading as a bulwark against barbarism and as a pillar of universal culture.
Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, president of the National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA, for its contraction in Spanish), on behalf of President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, said the above at the opening of FIL Guadalajara 2015, that with a 800.000 potential audience, 1,900 publishing houses from 36 countries, 144 academics and literary forums and 650 authors and over 20,000 book professionals, represents the most important meeting of its kind in Latin America.
The ceremony was attended by Enrique Vila-Matas, FIL Romance Languages award winner 2015; Fernando del Paso, Cervantes Prize winner 2015; Tonatiuh Bravo Padilla, president of Guadalajara University; Raúl Padilla López, Chairman of FIL; John Whittingdale, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport of the United Kingdom; Sir Vernon Ellis, director of the British Council, and Miguel Ángel Mancera, mayor of Mexico D.F.
Also, Enrique Cabrero Mendoza, director of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT, for its contraction in Spanish); José Carreño, general director of the Economic Culture Fund (FCE, for its acronym in Spanish); Marisol Schulz, General Director of FIL and Aristóteles Sandoval, Jaime Heliodoro Rodríguez Calderón and Graco Ramirez, governors of Jalisco, Nuevo Leon and Morelos respectively.
Tovar y de Teresa stated that promote books is a way of forming readers able to express their opinions, therefore it is also a celebration of life and culture. With the book, he said, memory is recovered and is a common good that resists the horror in the contemporary world, and cited the award-winning author Enrique Vila-Matas when he wrote: "Reading the others there is little room for war bursts and much, instead, for the ability of a man to respect each others’ rights, because nothing less aggressive than a man who looks down to read a book. "
The head of Conaculta stressed the richness of the book as an anchor that recovers values such as dignity and rights of every human being on the planet, as a tool that recalls and a piece of light in support of culture, therefore, he assured, the FIL honors this object as the largest space of freedom, and three decades of a word forum to create better spaces of freedom, dialogue and peace are celebrated in this edition.
During the ceremony, Patricia Martinez, spokesperson of Romance Languages Literary FIL Award 2015 jury, said that the prize to Enrique Vila-Matas is given for being an author holder of a critical and intelligent work, where borders are blurred between essay and fiction, being one of the pens that has contributed to renew European and Latin American literature, challenging the fragile condition of the writer in the contemporary world, inscribing his work in the tradition of Cervantes and Cortázar.
After receiving the award from Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, president of Conaculta, Enrique Vila-Matas read his speech, Writing is the future, where he said that for the author, to write a book can be a dead end, because he asks himself whether will be over there, though, he said, he has been fortunate to find this minimum space to escape and start each time a new project, something that has convinced himself that literature is an art melted to life, an art that requires from the viewer and the reader to become an artist and a poet.
"We are in a world where those who read are a large minority, writers are survivors of endangered species, knowing that future will no longer come with cheerful manners of a different music. This new reality is here, together, as a large choir and as an author is difficult to keep hope alive", Enrique Vila-Matas said.
President Tonatiuh Bravo Padilla recalled that in these passed 29 years the FIL, in coordination with the University of Guadalajara, has become the most important fair in Latin America and second worldwide, after Frankfurt, displaying an academic program for 2015 that includes the International Meeting of Social Sciences, the International Seminar on Communication and Society; the History Colloquium, the International Democratic Culture Meeting and the International Interdisciplinary Philological Research Forum.
Raul Padilla, president of FIL, pointed out that the literary and publishing tradition of UK is present at the fair, sharing the cultural richness of the land of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf and George Orwell, among many others, besides highlighting the tributes and awards program to Hugo Gutiérrez Vega, Julio Scherer, Fernando del Paso, Elena Poniatowska, Sergio González Rodríguez, Irma Cordera, Paco Calderón, Jose Sarukhan, and publisher Carmen Balcells.
Finally, John Whittingdale, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, celebrated this new chapter under the Dual Year Mexico-United Kingdom, that with over 200 authors, academics, musicians, scientists and entrepreneurs from the publishing sector, coming from Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England, will keep strengthening ties between our nations through culture, literature, traditions and reading, fundamental aspects over the decades to achieve mutual understanding between two countries united by a common history.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
