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Casa 2006 prizes are a reality
• Writers from Peru, Guyana, Brazil and Cuba bear
off the awards
• Honorary Prizes announced
BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA—Granma
International staff writer—
THE
Casa Prize, whose continental and Caribbean
significance was supported this year with the entry
of 546 works in poetry, short story, essay and
Brazilian and Caribbean literature, was presented in
the Che Guevara Hall to writers from Peru, Guyana
and Brazil.
In
the closing ceremony the books worthy of the
honorary awards named after José Lezama Lima, José
María Arguedas and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, were
also announced.
CASA
2006
The
Short Story jury, which evaluated 144 books,
selected the title Dichosos los que lloran
(Lucky Those Who Cry), by Cuban Angel Santiesteban,
“for the creation of a violent and at the same time
humane prison universe, narrated in a distant and
objective style that does not impose moral judgments
at any point, but in place of them, gives a stark
description of that murky world for whoever has to
suffer it but illuminating for whoever reads about
it.”
Immediately after the minute was read out,
Santiesteban, who had returned to a theme that won
him the Alejo Carpentier Prize in 2001 with Los
hijos que nadie quiso (The Children Who Nobody
Wanted), commented that it is a monothematic book of
more than 30 stories and vignettes where he
describes his characters in limited situations. “I
hope that readers will not cry as much as me. What I
describe is a harsh reality and I do so without
sweetening it, it is the real lives as lived in
prison.”
Another Cuban, Abel Sierra, took off the
Historical-social Essay prize for Del otro lado
del espejo. La sexualidad en la construcción de la
nación cubana (From the other side of the
looking glass: sexuality in the construction of the
Cuban nation), a text that the jury appreciated was
written “invoking one of the principal
characteristics of the genre, which is that of
displaying the controversial nature of certain
sensitive issues, “ and moreover considered it
“another merit, that the detailed analysis of the
Cuban homoerotic environment does not prevent him
from examining the diverse gender politics of a
regulated masculinity and femininity, or from
introducing reflections that illuminate another kind
of identity politics.”
Sierra, a researcher at the Fernando Ortiz
Foundation, explained later to Granma
International: “It is a line that I have working
on for 10 years, since I was a history student. The
different has always concerned me; in other words
the paths into which history has not ventured, the
areas of silence. I have approached those themes
since my first book La nación sexuada (The
Sexed Nation), and this one is the culmination of
five years’ work. It is a text against the
heterosexist, homophobic centers of power, which
discriminate against everything different, as has
sometimes been sustained by the Cuban nationality
itself.”
Among the 292 volumes of poetry entered, the jury
unanimously selected A bordo del arca (On
Board the Ark) by Peruvian Arturo Corcuera, “for the
richness of its metaphors and the profundity and
humor with which the same are treated,” while in
Caribbean literature (in English or Creole) the
prize went to Suspended Sentences by Guyanese
Mark McWatt, a book distinguished by “the
originality and ingenuity of the literary game on
which this anthology of short stories written by
supposedly real authors is based.”
Ricardo Rezende Figueira with Pisando fora da
propia sombra.
A escravidao por Dívida no Brasil contemporaneo
bore off the award in the Brazilian Literature
category for its excellent combination of
sociological analysis and the vehemence of social
injustice. The author undertook an investigation
into the regime of indebted slavery in the north of
Brazil.
HONORARY PRIZES
Roberto Fernández Retamar, president of Casa,
announced the honorary prizes given “to relevant
books and themes” and which bear the names of
eminent intellectuals in the region.
It
came as a surprise that the Ezequiel Martínez
Estrada Essay Prize went to La Universidad en el
siglo XXI.
Para una reforma democrática y emancipadora de la
Universidad,
(The University in the 21st Century.
For a Democratic and Emancipatory Reform of the
University) by Portuguese Boaventura de Sousa
Santos, given that he was present in the Che Guevara
Hall as a juror in the Caribbean Literature
category.
The
decision was taken because he “controversially
approaches a theme of universal concern although
exemplified above all by the Brazilian experience,
in which some of the most intense disputes in the
field of the current public policies are condensed.”
De
Sousa Santos informed this publication: “Being a
member of the jury and receiving one of the prizes
that the Casa award is somewhat unusual. I am very
happy, not just because of it being a Casa Prize,
but for having chosen a very controversial theme,
the transformation of the public university.”
The
intellectual explained that “there is an enormous
pressure from global capitalism at this time to
privatize the entire public university system, to
subject it to market laws via the liberalization of
services. So education, and above all university
education, would be a merchandise produced in global
universities that could be Harvard, Yale, Oxford and
which could sell to the whole world biology,
sociology, law by paying, of course, intellectual
property rights.”
In
his view “this is the destruction of public
knowledge, that is the danger and it is not enough
to denounce it. This process is occurring within the
World Trade Organization in this new round of
negotiations, and this moment is a bit paralyzed by
the action of Brazil, South Africa and India, but
this transformation is on the agenda. It is
important not just to expose it but to propose
alternatives, because the public university in many
Latin American countries is also very indolent, old,
paralyzed by people with privileges, and it is
necessary to revolutionize it, have it relate more
to the community, let it open up more to society and
new themes, become democratized.”
The
José Lezama Lima Poetry Prize went to INRI,
by Chilean Raúl Zurita, “for exploring the emotive
parabola of a universe of human values whose enemies
cannot destroy it,” while the José María Arquedas
award for narrative was conceded to La mosca
soldado (The Fly Soldier), by Marcio Veloz
Maggiolo (Dominican Republic) “for recovering the
universe of the Caribbean from a perspective in
which reality and myth is fused, anthropology and
police investigation, certain vestiges of
Pre-Colombian cultures and the attention that he
established with the world of today.”
Beyond the
readings by the juries of the works in competition,
the Casa 2006 Prize (January 16-26) is prolonged by
intense cultural events, panels, debates, readings
and on this occasion the Contemporary Oaxaca Art, as
part of the bicentennial celebration in Cuba of the
birth of Benito Juárez.
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