Inauguration of the Bogota International Book Fair 2024, Bogota, Colombia, April 17, 2024. Photo: Semanario Voz.
The presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, inaugurated the Bogota International Book Fair 2024 (FILBO 2024). Inaugurated on Wednesday, April 17, the event will continue until May 2 at the Corferias venue in Bogota, with “Reading Nature” is its central theme. There will also be a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the publication of the novel La Vorágine, by Colombian writer José Eustasio Rivera.
Venezuela’s Minister of Culture Ernesto Villegas attended the event along with other Venezuelan writers. “Last night was the inauguration, headed by President Gustavo Petro and Lula Da Silva, his Brazilian counterpart, guest of honor of the invited country in this edition of FILBO,” he wrote in a Twitter post.
“I had the pleasure of meeting with the ministers of culture of both countries, Juan David Correa [of Colombia] and Margareth Menezes [of Brazil], whom I gave a copy of my book Golpe Bajo, which is about the parliamentary coup that overthrew former Brazilian President Dilma Roussef in 2016,” Villegas wrote on social media. “The fair was inaugurated on the same day that marked the 10th anniversary of the passing of [Colombian author] Gabriel García Márquez.”
In his welcome address, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that the novel La Vorágine is a book about the slavery of the indigenous people in the 20th century, and it describes the destruction of human beings and nature due to greed. He added that the author’s message was not heard at the time of the publication of the book or in the years to come, and threats of imminent destruction now loom over ecosystems.
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The president of Brazil, who is on an official visit to Colombia, said that he was honored that his country was the guest of honor at FILBO 2024, which he described as one of the most important book fairs in Latin America. Referring to the Amazon, he said that this biome shared by Brazil and Colombia has been the theater of common experiences inscribed in the cultures and memories of both countries.
José Eustasio Rivera’s book describing the environmental impact of the rubber industry finds parallels in the work of Brazilian authors, such as The Orphans of El Dorado by Brazilian writer Milton Hatoum, Lula said.
“El Dorado, the mythical city of gold, whose search left a trail of desolation, is possibly the word that best evokes the madness of the exploitation of which our nature and people have been victims,” President Lula expressed. He went on to say that one of Brazil’s goals is to cure the wounds of environmental devastation with sustainable development and to transform people’s lives from exclusion to real citizenship.
“We want to build a country where caring for the environment and people are not exclusive goals,” he added. “The theme of FILBO, Reading Nature, exposes the meaninglessness of the Western dichotomy between the world of people and the world of nature, which is leading us to a climate catastrophe.”
Almost 2,300 events will take place during FILBO 2024. At least 25 delegations from foreign countries will be in attendance, and more than half a million people are expected to visit the book fair.
(Alba Ciudad) by Luigino Bracci Roa
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/AF
Luigino Bracci
He is passionate about computer science since he was about 14 years old, at that age “a man gave me a small computer that he had bought in the eighties, of those that were connected to a television and had to be programmed to work (a Sinclair ZX81 ), and I really liked it.” On his political inclination, his parents were a great influence. “They were people of very humble origins, both emigrants, dissatisfied with injustice and inequality. But they were not militants of the left. I had many other influences, classmates in HS whose parents were on the left, as well as several teachers who were trained in the Pedagogical and gave us classes at a time as conflictive as it was the presidency of CAP and the military insurrection of Chávez ” He enrolled in the UCV and in 2006 he graduated in Computing, a career that he complements with popular communication in the digital field.
