Mexico will be at the epicenter of the Caribbean Festival in Santiago de Cuba
Havana, Apr 26 (RHC) - Mexico will be the center of the Caribbean Festival, which will take place in Santiago de Cuba, the quintessential party region.
The Caribbean Festival, also known the Fire Festival, will dedicate its congas and comparsas to the Mexican celebrations of life and death, to its 2nd World Congress on Death, and the International Colloquium "The Caribbean that unites us", a very special space for reflection and debate on issues related to the history and culture of the Caribbean peoples.
For these and other purposes, Professor Abelardo Larduet, a researcher and coordinator of theoretical events at the Casa del Caribe, is in Mexico, carrying out an important work program in several Mexican states related to the festival.
Larduet is a priest of Afro-Cuban religions, and regularly teaches courses on Cuban popular religiosity in educational centers and cultural institutions such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and in other high houses of study in Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Michoacán, and the southeast.
Vergés, considered a historian and tireless promoter of the roots and essences of the Caribbean Festival with its 42 years of existence, points out that the fire festival from July 3 to 9 will be above all a week of culture that exalts the most authentic roots of the spirituality of the Cuban and Caribbean people.
The idea of this cultural and folkloric meeting materialized in April 1981 under the name of the Festival of Performing Arts of Caribbean Origin, and since then important intellectuals from the Spanish-speaking, English-speaking and French-speaking Caribbean have participated.
Like every season, there is a main theoretical event. This year will be dedicated to the International colloquium "The Caribbean that unites us", with workshops on popular religions in Cuba and the Caribbean and their ceremonies and rituals, popular music, plastic arts, dance and percussion, popular theater, Caribbean literature, storytellers, regional archeology and educators.
As part of the program, the second edition of the World Congress on Death will be held, an occasion in which scholars, researchers and promoters will address this issue with a multidisciplinary approach.
Mexico will stand out on this topic as probably the only country in the universe that transforms the nostalgia and suffering of All Souls Day into a party to meet with their ancestors, eat and drink with them and talk about the human and the divine.
According to Vergés, Mexicans will be very motivated protagonists because their ancestral celebrations of life and death will be the focus of the meeting of intellectuals, academics, researchers and artists who represent the mestizo popular cultures of the region and their traditions. (Source: Prensa Latina)
