Vargas Llosa: "America was a tower of Babel before the arrival of Europeans" | Chronic

The Peruvian Nobel Mario Vargas Llosa he said on Wednesday that "America was a tower of Babel before the arrival of Europeans", that Castilian "introduces moral conscience in Latin America" and "Academies do not create language, speakers and scribes create it, academies collect what people who speak a language do."

Thus, Vargas Llosa left the inauguration of the VIIIth International Congress of the Spanish Language, celebrated until next Saturday in the city of Córdoba, and whose next edition will take place in 2022, his hometown, Arequipa, as announced during the ceremony that took place at the San Martín Libertador Theater, in the presence of the King and Queen of Spain and the 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 the Europeans arrived "badured the writer, opening his speech.

Vargas Losa pointed out that without"Controversies generated by conquest disappear when it comes to language." No one disputes the importance for America to unite in a single desire to express, in one language, the extraordinary diversity that characterizes it..

With regard to controversies, the author of "Conversation in the cathedral", indicted against Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

"I would like to quote a letter that López Obrador sent to the King of Spain and Pope Francisco, suggesting that they apologize for the violence committed during those years, that 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 western world five centuries ago thanks to Spain, and 200 years are independent and sovereign, so many millions of Indians are still marginalized, poor, ignorant and exploited ", he added.

The writer, afrimó "It's a question that virtually all Latin American presidents can ask because no Latin American country has solved this proverbial injustice".

Understand the writer of "Pantaleón and visitors", "This problem is still topical and concerns us Latin Americans, we have not been able to solve it".

Vargas Losa said 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 of criticism 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 brought us this moral conscience and made us citizens of a culture that introduced more advanced and progressive institutions such as democracy, and the idea of ​​a contradictory culture capable of to criticize himself and be very severe about missed or lost, "he added.

These congresses, he commented, "they help to cement this fraternity and to keep alive the indispensable exchanges so that this language is constantly enriched with contributions coming from the five continents, bringing us together and integrating us ".

Spanish is about "a language that has indisputable vitality" baderted, 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 is done by those who speak a language.".

"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 charged, for example, imperialists, who presents them to Americanisms in the dictionary even before they are born or who pbad the test of the academy" , he said.

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.

The details

Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has strongly criticized the request of the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador to King Philip VI of Spain, by letter, to ask pardon for the country mentioned above for conquest.