image copyrightGetty Images
After decades away from his homeland, the ashes of Guatemalan writer and Nobel Prize winner in Literature Miguel Ángel Asturias returned to Guatemala on Thursday, where they were received with state honors at La Aurora International Airport.
"Guatemala proudly receives one of its most illustrious sons," wrote President Bernardo Arévalo in X about who was considered the father of magical realism and precursor of the Latin American boom.
With the arrival of the funeral, the authorities began a series of commemorative events and celebrations that will last four days to honor the writer, who made visible the indigenous world and the Mayan culture, and who was a pioneer in bringing the portrait of a dictator to the continent's literature.
Asturias died of cancer in Madrid in 1974 and was buried in the Parisian cemetery of Père-Lachaise at the wish of his family, who did not want him to be buried in Guatemala or Spain at that time because both countries lived under de facto governments.
His remains remained until this Thursday in the famous cemetery where the remains of other great writers such as Honoré de Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust also rest.
His son Miguel Ángel Asturias Amado, in charge of moving the ashes, said when welcoming his father's remains: "Today we are saying 'welcome to your homeland, to these sunrises, to hear your bells again and to see this Guatemala again. We hope that we will find ourselves in a union of the four towns and we will be one.'"
The Minister of Culture and Sports, Luis Méndez Salinas, said: "Receiving him commits us. He knew how to name Guatemala and now it is Guatemala's turn to pronounce his name in the classrooms, in the libraries, in the theaters and in the squares, in all the national languages. An urn to receive the Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner."
almost a stranger
Born in 1899 into a moderately wealthy family, Asturias is one of the only six Nobel Prize winners in Literature that Latin America has given.
End of Most read
But, unlike the Mexican Octavio Paz, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez or the Chileans Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, the Guatemalan is almost unknown to many readers on the continent.
His work is strongly marked by social and political criticism; he created magical narrative universes in which the dreamlike and indigenous mythology were mixed with the everyday in a cocktail that years later would be baptized as "magical realism."
The land and the time in which he lived are very present in its pages.
"There is a very strong Guatemalan quality in the work of Asturias, as well as a very Asturian way of saying and naming things," the Guatemalan writer and editor Carmen Lucía Alvarado commented in 2025 in an interview with BBC Mundo.
Among his most recognized works are "El Señor Presidente", "Legends of Guatemala" and "Men of Corn", which many recognize as his masterpiece.
Exile
Miguel Ángel Asturias left Guatemala after the overthrow of President Árbenz by the coup d'état of Carlos Castillo Armas in 1954, with the support of the CIA.
The new government stripped him of his nationality and Asturias was condemned to live in exile.
The writer was accused of being a communist and his books were banned in Guatemala, Guatemalan historian Julio César Pinto Soria explained to BBC Mundo in 2025.
He suffered that exile like a tear, he stated that "he was inside Guatemala, that they could never get him out," and that "in order to be, to write, he always needed to hear that voice again," added the historian.
After the murder of Castillo Armas, Asturias returned to his country on several occasions.
But after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1967, due to the civil war in Guatemala and political repression, he never returned.
Now, with the transfer of his remains, Asturias will rest forever in the land that he loved so much and inspired his work.
Discover more
Video
End of Video
