The Diplomat
The capital of Paraguay, Asunción, will host, on May 23 and 24, the third International Conference on Portuguese and Spanish Languages (CILPE), promoted by the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) and which, in this edition, will be dedicated to the theme Languages, Communication, Intercultural Education and Diversity.
The objective of the Conference, whose two previous editions were held in Lisbon (2019) and Brasilia (2022), is “to highlight the convergence of the Spanish and Portuguese languages in the Ibero-American space, which together form a community of about 850 million speakers worldwide, being the third and fifth most used languages (respectively) in the digital space and on the Internet,” as reported by the OEI in a press release.
The CILPE2023 program will focus its debates and conferences on three main themes: We are what we read: languages, literatures, communities; Languages and Intercultural Education; and The power and value of communication. Among the participants in the different sessions and moments of the conference are the secretary general of the OEI, Mariano Jabonero; the director of Multilingualism of the OEI, Ana Paula Laborinho; the minister of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay, Julio César Arriola, and the secretary of Linguistic Policies of Paraguay, Ladislaa Alcaraz de Silvero.
Other academics and experts in the field of languages from institutions such as the Cervantes Institute, the International Institute of the Portuguese Language and specialized agencies such as EFE and Llorente y Cuenca (LLYC) will also participate. The sessions can be followed through the OEI’s official YouTube channels in Spanish, Portuguese and Guarani, which will be the official languages of communication and debate.
In 2022, the second edition of CILPE had nearly 900 participants, both in face-to-face and virtual formats, and speakers from countries such as Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, East Timor, Angola and Guinea-Bissau.
CILPE2023 is promoted by the OEI through the Organizing Committee made up of the Government of Paraguay, the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), the International Institute of the Portuguese Language (IILP), the Cervantes Institute of Spain, the Guimarães Rosa Institute of Brazil and the Camões-Institute of Cooperation and Language, I.P. of Portugal.
