Overview
- The award was presented at the Palacio de Bellas Artes’ Sala Manuel M. Ponce by UNAM rector Leonardo Lomelí Vanegas and Mexico’s culture secretary Claudia Curiel de Icaza, with Silvia Lemus and juror Natalia Toledo in attendance.
- In her acceptance, Belli dedicated the honor to Nicaragua’s people, political prisoners and exiles and said her country has returned to a dictatorship equal to or worse than Somoza.
- She honored the recently deceased singer Norma Helena Gadea and reflected on her exile and Sandinista past to underscore literature’s civic responsibility.
- Belli urged Mexico’s government to recover a tradition of solidarity and asserted that sovereignty lacks legitimacy without popular will.
- The jury cited her renewal of Hispanoamerican poetry and her dialogue with society and history, while UNAM’s rector praised her work as an inexhaustible source of hope and said the university will preserve, study and share it.