"America was a tower of Babel before the arrival of Europeans" and other phrases of Vargas Llosa at the Congress of the Spanish language

The Peruvian Nobel Mario Vargas Llosa He said today that "America was a tower of Babel before the arrival of Europeans", that Castilian "introduced moral consciousness in Latin America" ​​and that "academies do not create not the language, they are created by speakers and scribes, who do who speak a language. "

In this way, Vargas Llosa left inaugurated the VIIIth International Congress of the Spanish Languageas announced during the ceremony that took place at the San Martin Libertador Theater in the presence of the King and Queen of Spain and President Mauricio Macri.

"They do not agree on the number of languages ​​and dialects that existed in Latin America at the arrival of the Spaniards and the Portuguese – at least 1,500 say some, others bring the sum to 3,000 – but the Americans did not understand each other and that's why they killed themselves. America was a tower of Babel when Europeans arrived", badured the author by opening his speech.

Vargas Losa, however, remarked that "the controversies generated by the conquest disappear in terms of language. No one disputes the importance for America to unite in a single will of expression, in one language., the extraordinary diversity that characterizes it ".

"I would like to quote a letter that López Obrador sent to the King of Spain and Pope Francis, inviting them to apologize for the violence committed during those years, which Juana Ines de la Cruz called rudos", he anticipated.

"I have the impression that the Mexican president has been cheated as a recipient, he had to send to himself and answer, or answer, the question of why Mexico, which joined the West five centuries ago thanks to Spain, and which is independent and sovereign 200 years ago, still counts so many millions of marginalized, poor Indians ignorant and exploited"

"It's a question – he added – that virtually all Latin American presidents can be appointed because no Latin American country has solved this proverbial injustice".

Understand the writer of Pantaleón and visitors"This problem is still topical and our Latin American Americans are aware that they can not solve it."

Vargas Losa stated that "when the Spanish language reached our shores, our mountains, our deserts, our jungles, many other things happened: Greece, Aristotle and Plato, Rome with its jurists, the Renaissance, values ​​that are the best of this Western culture: the right to criticize and a moral conscience that judges our actions and is able to condemn us for not having solved a problem that began five centuries ago ".

"The Spanish language, he concluded, brought us this moral conscience and made us citizens of a culture this has introduced more advanced and progressive institutions such as democracy, and the idea of ​​a contradictory culture capable of criticizing itself and being very severe in what was missing or was lost. "

These congresses, he added, "help to cement this fraternity and to keep alive the indispensable exchanges so that this language is constantly enriched by contributions from the five continents, bringing us together and integrating us," added the Nobel born in Arequipa in 1936, which will take place tomorrow. his 83rd birthday in homage to the novel Rayuelaof Julio Cortázar

Spanish speaks of "a language that has undeniable vitality," he said, although he warned that "this is not the product of academies, as some naïve people think. Academies do not create language, they are created by speakers and scribes. Academies collect what people who speak a language do. "

"It is true that in the past, the Royal Spanish Academy, to which I belong, has maintained a certain arrogance in front of the American academies, but that would not happen today." , did he declare. "The Royal Academy is so sensitive, so likely to be accused, for example, of imperialism, which introduces them into the dictionary even before they are born or who pbad the test of academism in Americanisms. ".

The director of the RAE participated, among others, in the opening ceremony. Santiago Muñoz Machado; his partner of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; and that of the Academia Argentina de Letras, José Luis Moure; the rector of the National University of Córdoba, Hugo Juri; the Spanish writer and scholar, Carme Rieraand the writer Santiago Kovadloff.

From the ceremony at which the former RAE holder was honored Víctor García de la Concha In addition to their contribution to the construction of a plural and collective language, the Governor of Córdoba also participated. Juan Schiarettiand the mayor of the provincial capital, Ramón Mestre.

With information from Telam