The Diplomat
The Instituto Cervantes is committed to strengthening its collaboration with Colombia’s leading cultural organization, the Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
This was agreed last week during a meeting between the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, and the director of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, Medófilo Medina, as part of the former’s visit to Colombia, which concluded last Sunday.
During the meeting, as reported by both institutions on their respective websites, the two leaders talked about the importance of Spanish and the growth of its speakers in the world and discussed upcoming joint projects between the two institutions, such as collaboration in the realization of the national conference Estallido Social de 2021 en Colombia: lenguajes y literatura, an event on the relationship between language and power, and language and protest led by the Caro y Cuervo and to be held between September 12 and 15 in Bogota.
Likewise, García Montero and Medófilo Medina talked about the interest that the Instituto Caro y Cuervo has in approaching African countries in order to develop outreach activities with nations such as Senegal and Ivory Coast. In this sense, the director of the Instituto Cervantes made available to the Caro y Cuervo the network of centers in Africa to carry out research on the African substratum in the Colombian culture and society.
García Montero also offered the collaboration of the Instituto Cervantes in the study of native and indigenous languages. In addition to Spanish, Colombia has more than 65 indigenous languages, two Creole languages and Romani.
Likewise, an assessment was made of the Caro y Cuervo delegation that, since 2014 and thanks to a collaboration agreement, has been installed at the Instituto Cervantes’ headquarters in Madrid, which has made it possible to work together in the dissemination of linguistic and cultural projects, such as the Diccionario de colombianismos (Dictionary of Colombianisms), among others. The agreement is scheduled to be renewed in 2024 with the Colombian Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for the Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
Created in 1942, the Instituto Caro y Cuervo is the reference body for culture and humanities in the South American country. Its purpose is to promote and develop research, teaching, counseling and dissemination of the languages of the national territory and its literatures.
“I have always had as a point of reference the collaboration with the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, one of the great institutions that study language, that defend unity, but with respect for diversity, that understands the importance of hegemonic, majority languages being understood and respecting non-hegemonic languages, and in this sense the work of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo and that of the Instituto Cervantes go hand in hand,” said García Montero.
“Relations between the Instituto Cervantes and the Instituto Caro y Cuervo are privileged, of course,” stated Medófilo Medina. “Languages are built by the speakers, academies and centers fulfill a function, but languages are the creation of the people,” he concluded.
