2024-04-18 10:11:40
President Gustavo Petro
recalled at the opening of the Bogotá Book Fair (FILBo) the novel ‘La vorágine’, by José Eustasio Rivera on his centenary, a book of “rebellious words” that “relates a hatred of nature, of the jungle,” and questioned: “Did we live this a century ago, or do we live it now?”
“As happens with ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, we find ourselves in the written words; here we are, here is Colombia”said Petro during the opening ceremony of the FILBo,
in which he was accompanied by his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
since Brazil is the guest of honor of this year’s edition.
The president emphasized one of the phrases from ‘La vorágine’ with a copy in hand: “Before I had fallen in love with any woman, I gambled my heart at random and was won by violence,” on which he based much of his speech since, in his words, “the heart of Colombia has been filled with hatred and violence.”
Nature and the destruction of the Amazon also marked his speech because “the Amazon rainforest is being depredated again, it is no longer rubber (as in ‘La vorágine’) there are other reasons, but it is ending life”, something which in turn related to the water shortage and the drought that Bogotá is going through, which has led to rationing measures in the capital.
“It was written a century ago and we didn’t understand it, we didn’t understand the written word,” he said.
The spoken and written word
The head of state took advantage of the space to remember the creator of the Bogotá Book Fair, who he said was the liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, assassinated in 1948: “paradoxically, the genius of the spoken word gave space to the written word (…) which ended shortly in the forcibly muted word.”
“And that is the history of Colombia; a rebellious word, which gets rid of the mute, which is spoken as a rebel, which is written as a rebel and which also ends up mute by force,” added Petro, for whom “there can be no revolution without creation, which is ultimately art”.
And, like ‘La vorágine’, “works of art do not age (…) art remains”concluded Petro.
FILBo 2024 and Lula
The Spanish philologist and writer Irene Vallejo gave the opening speech of the FILBo with an ode to reading, “an achievement of millennial significance”, and to writing and all the places to which literature can take us thanks to “the black footsteps that are letters.”
Brazil and nature are the thematic axes of the XXXVI edition of FilBo, which will receive visitors until May 2. Along with Vallejo, also the Brazilian writer Luciany Aparecida, recognized for her work ‘Mata Doce’, had a special participation in the opening of the fair.
The opening ceremony also featured the participation of Lula, who arrived in Bogotá on Tuesday night and had a busy agenda with Petro this Wednesday, including the signing of several bilateral agreements.
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