The International Cervantino Festival (FIC) of Guanajuato presented its 52nd edition on Tuesday at an event held at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, where it was announced that Brazil and the Mexican state of Oaxaca will be this year’s guests of honor.
The presentation of the festival’s program, which will be held from October 11 to 27 in Guanajuato capital, included the participation of Diego Sinhue Rodríguez and Salomón Jara, governors of Guanajuato (center) and Oaxaca (south) respectively, the Brazilian ambassador, Fernando Coimbra, as well as Alejandra Frausto, secretary of culture of Mexico, the Mexican singer Eugenia León and the director of the FIC, Mariana Aymerich.
As guests of honor at the edition, Oaxacan and Brazilian artists and representations will have a great weight this year.
Hence, they highlight the inclusion of ‘La Guelaguetza’, an emblematic celebration of Oaxaca that includes dance, music and colorful traditional costumes, or the participation of Filipe Catto and Lenine Francisco, who will perform the closing ceremony, representatives of Brazilian culture.
“The diversity of our people will be very well represented (…) indigenous people, women, Afro-descendants, members of the LGBT community are proof of an inclusive and plural Brazil,” said Ambassador Coimbra, who also recalled the commemoration in 2024 of the 190 years of diplomatic relations between his country and Mexico.
For his part, the governor of Oaxaca celebrated that “Oaxaca will merge in an embrace of fraternity with the international community in this upcoming festival that is already an unparalleled reference in our country.”
The director of the FIC boasted of an edition with a “vast and diverse” programme, in which there will be local artists of the stature of the aforementioned Eugenia León, who will pay tribute to Cuban boleros.
There will also be a very varied international representation with the Noche Electrónica China, the Ivorian singer Dobet Gnahoré, the London group ‘The Pairs’ or the Argentine band ‘Los verdaderos decadentes’, among many others.
This year it will also serve as a tribute to the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, who died ten years ago, as well as to Felipe Carrillo, former governor of Yucatán, whose death is a centenary.
“Guanajuato is the birthplace of Cervantino and it should never be moved from here,” said the Secretary of Culture of Mexico, of Guanajuato roots as she defined herself when recalling the editions of the festival experienced during her childhood.
Frausto recalled the visit of Claudia Sheinbaum, virtual Mexican president, who two years ago inaugurated the FIC on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in a doubly emotional event for being the first after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Cervantino Festival, whose first edition was held in 1972, is one of the most important cultural and artistic events in Latin America.
Source: holanew
