Paris (France) (AFP) - The French authorities delivered this Tuesday in Paris the ashes of the writer Miguel Ángel Asturias, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, to his family for their return to Guatemala, after more than half a century buried in a Parisian cemetery.

First modification: 03/11/2026 - 18:47

Asturias, lawyer, writer and diplomat, died at the age of 74 in Spain in 1974 and was buried in the French capital, where he had resided for long periods. His tomb, in the form of a stylized Mayan stele, stands out in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, where numerous personalities are buried, such as Honoré de Balzac, Édith Piaf and Jim Morrison.

This Tuesday, in an emotional ceremony at the Paris City Hall, municipal officials gave the writer's son the urn with his father's remains, an AFP journalist confirmed.

With tears in his eyes, Miguel Ángel Asturias Amado hugged the small container, covered in handmade fabric.

"It is very difficult, as a son, to have made the decision for my father to return to his homeland [...] leaving this country that he loved and loved so much," the 85-year-old man told AFP after the event.

"It is a moment of sadness, but at the same time of joy, of two countries that have understood Miguel Ángel Asturias and that today give him to me with all their love," he added.

The family of the Nobel Prize winner now decided to repatriate the remains motivated by the coming to power of the social democratic president Bernardo Arévalo in 2024, as the writer's son had explained, after refusing to do so at the request made by the two previous governments.

"The historical and political circumstances had not allowed it and certainly those circumstances have changed a lot and fortunately now we are in the process of being able to receive him back home," said the Guatemalan Minister of Culture, Luis Méndez.

According to Méndez a few days ago, "the exhumation and cremation procedure was completed" on October 20.

"Parisian by adoption"

The ashes of the Guatemalan author are scheduled to arrive in his country on November 12, where two days later the funeral services will be held at the National Palace. The next day, the remains of the "Big Tongue", as the writer is known, will be placed in a monument in the country's main cultural center that bears his name.

In Paris, a plaque will remember that his remains rested for 52 years in this famous cemetery, so visited by tourists.

"Guatemalan by birth, by blood and by heart, Asturias was also a Parisian by adoption," said Audrey Pulvar, Parisian councilor in charge of International Relations, during the ceremony, before the writer's relatives. "He considered France his second homeland."

Crowned with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967, Asturias is one of the six Latin American writers who have the prestigious prize, but he is much less known than the Mexican Octavio Paz, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez or the Chileans Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda.

His most famous work is "El Señor Presidente" (1946), inspired by the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920), and is considered one of the first novels about autocrats that later multiplied so much in Latin American literature.

Asturias was also a great defender of the indigenous world. His first published book, "Legends of Guatemala" (1930), compiles stories of Mayan origin, and in "Men of Corn" (1949), a precursor of magical realism, narrates the conflict between native communities and the capitalist exploitation of the land.

© 2026 AFP

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