By Sofía Menchú
GUATEMALA CITY, Nov 12 (Reuters) – The remains of Nobel laureate Miguel Angel Asturias are set to arrive in his native Guatemala on Thursday half a century after his death, fulfilling the writer’s wish and closing a story marked by both triumph and exile.
After years of requests from Guatemalan governments for the remains to be returned, Asturias’ descendants finally agreed when progressive President Bernardo Arevalo came to power in 2024.
“Everybody has wanted to bring Miguel Angel Asturias back like a medal,” his grandson Sandino Asturias told Reuters. “We have always refused to allow him to be used as political capital by anyone.”
The time seemed right with Arevalo’s reformist government aligned with Asturias’ own political beliefs.
Arevalo’s election victory was unexpected and marked a watershed moment for Guatemala, ushering in a progressive movement seeking to reshape a political landscape long dominated by conservative parties.
“We decided it was time,” Asturias said. “For the country and for society, it is an act of historical justice to be able to return to his homeland one of the great figures of Guatemalan literature.”
Asturias, born in Guatemala City in 1899, is the only Central American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, with his 1967 award for overall achievement.
He also served as a diplomat in several Central and South American countries, and was stripped of his citizenship for supporting the left-leaning government of Jacobo Arbenz, who was overthrown in a US-backed coup in 1954.
His work combined the richness of Mayan traditions with innovative literary techniques and a profound critique of dictatorships, inequality and political oppression, making him one of the most important voices in 20th-century Latin American literature.
The writer spent his final years in Madrid, where he died of cancer in 1974. He was later buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, alongside the remains of singer Jim Morrison, writer Oscar Wilde and composer Frederic Chopin.
French authorities handed over the ashes to the Asturias family earlier this month, after the exhumation and cremation of his remains.
Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture organized four days of tributes to Asturias. On Sunday, his ashes will be placed in a monument at the Miguel Angel Asturias Cultural Center in the capital Guatemala City.
(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Additional reporting by Diego Ore; Writing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Nia Williams)
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