The Diplomat
The Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) has joined Canoa, the pan-Hispanic network promoted by the Caro y Cuervo Institute (Colombia), the Instituto Cervantes (Spain), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Inca Garcilaso Cultural Center (Peru) to strengthen Spanish and its culture around the world.
The secretary general of the OEI, Mariano Jabonero, signed this past Wednesday the adhesion as an associated entity, in a ceremony held at the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in which Luis García Montero, director of the Institute, and Martín Gómez, secretary pro tempore of the executive committee of Canoa, participated.
Since 1949, the OEI has been working to promote cooperation between Ibero-American countries in the fields of education, science and culture, so “its membership in Canoa strengthens the network’s ties with Ibero-America as a whole, and broadens its support for the internationalization of culture in Spanish,” the two organizations said in a press release. The OEI will contribute to Canoa its accumulated experience as a facilitator of cooperation processes in its fields of action so that they can be replicated and useful in other countries.
The pan-Hispanic platform Canoa was launched in June 2020 with the aim of promoting Spanish-language culture and strengthening the influence and relevance of the Spanish-speaking community in today’s multipolar world. “The network remains open to the incorporation of other institutions, be they universities in Spanish-speaking countries, organizations whose task is to promote Ibero-American states or even other countries (not necessarily Spanish-speaking),” the press release states. The pan-Hispanic project takes its symbolic name from the fact that “canoe” was the first word of the native peoples of America to be adopted by the Spanish language.
