The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, has inaugurated in El Paso (Texas) the first extension of the Instituto Cervantes in the United States, which will have “a fundamental symbolic value for being a place of the border, of coexistence”, which has been able to “proudly preserve the best Hispanic traditions”.
The launching of this extension will have great importance in the Cervantes’ objective of promoting Spanish as a “language of miscegenation and understanding” both in the U.S. and internationally, García Montero continued during the opening ceremony, which took place last Wednesday.
The extensions all depend on a Cervantes center and are staffed by a small number of people, either staff or collaborators. Their area of action is the city where they are located and its surroundings, and they are attached to the Spanish Embassies or Consulates in the countries in which they operate. Cervantes currently has a dozen extensions around the world.
This extension, the first (“will not be the last”) of the Institute in the United States, will depend on the center in Albuquerque, in the neighboring state of New Mexico, which also has, like Texas, a high percentage of Hispanic population. It will be located on the campus of Southwest University, which has provided free facilities where it will offer, among other services, Spanish classes (reading and writing improvement for schoolchildren or training for teachers) and activities to foster pride in Hispanic culture.
According to García Montero at the inauguration, the United States is “a fundamental point of reference for the Pan-Hispanic community”, made up of more than 500 million people who speak Spanish, the second mother tongue in the world (after Chinese) and the second language of international communication (after English).
The objective, he insisted, is to disseminate and defend the presence and future of Hispanic culture in the U.S., which is the country with the second largest number of native Spanish speakers, only behind Mexico and ahead of Colombia, Spain and others, reaching a total of 23 countries. In addition, the opening of this new presence in the second most important city on the long border separating the United States and Mexico (the first is San Diego) coincides with the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Institute in 1991.
“The border landscape of El Paso is a call to cultural understanding, to the commitment to human rights from the most creative culture” because “culture is the best vaccine against supremacism and racism”, said García Montero. For this reason, the Instituto Cervantes in El Paso will focus its work on culture, with programs focused on miscegenation and respect, understanding and shared history. In addition, the center will offer Spanish classes designed for various professions, including doctors and nurses, since Southwest University has a recognized prestige in the teaching of these health disciplines, which are studied by numerous students.
