This year Buenos Aires has been appointed by Unesco as World Book Capital 2011, making last night’s opening of the 37th annual International Book Fair a special one.
The great cultural celebration will bring a variety of readers, writers, publishers, booksellers, journalists, scientists and literary figures together during the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires, which takes place from 20th April to 9th May at La Rural.
Despite the notable missing presence of Buenos Aires’ mayor, Mauricio Macri, many politicians attended the opening of the fair: minister of education, Alberto Sileoni and the capital’s minister of culture, Hernán Lombardi, among others.
Sileoni stated during his speech that “We are fighting for the country has full freedom of expression” and that “monopolies get on the grid of programmes. Sileoni argued in favour of the law of audiovisual media services from his government.
Lombardi paraphrased poets and heroes to advocate for a society without censorship and emphasised how those who think differently should not be stigmatised. He did not refer to specific actions that have restricted freedom of expression, and neither the controversy surrounding the invitation of the Foundation Book Award 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who will speak at 6.30pm today in the Jorge L. Borges hall.
Sixty people of the Argentine Worker’s Centre (CTA) and the Social Worker’s Movement (MST) yesterday partially cut calle San Martín in front of the Sheraton Hotel, to reject the presence of Vargas Llosa, who is staying at the hotel.
