The Supreme Council of Culture held an event, entitled
“Egypt and Chile – Cultural Relations”, as part of the Cultural Relations
Initiative organized by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.
Head of the Supreme Council of Culture, Hisham Azmy, started
the opening speech by praising the Cultural Relations Initiative, stressing
that it confirms that Egypt will always treasure its cultural relations with
other countries. This is the initiative’s second year. It was launched in
September 2020. Azmy explained that relations between Egypt and Chile date back
to the early 20th Century. On the cultural level, a number of
Chilean theatre groups participated in the Experimental Theater Festival in
Egypt.
According to Azmy, Egypt contributed to the establishment of
the Center for Arab Studies at the University of Chile, and funded student
exchange programmes between the Ministries of Education and Higher Education of
both Egypt and Chile. This is in addition to other cooperation programmes
between the two countries, including the translation movement of Egyptian
literature into Spanish.
Ambassador of Chile to Egypt, Pablo Arriaran, spoke about
the history of Chile and its geographical location, which is dominated by
desert, as in Egypt, He explained that, like most Latin American countries,
immigrants live side by side with the natives in Chile, highlighting the
presence of Middle Eastern migrants, mostly coming from Palestine, Jordan, and
Syria, where there are 450,000 Chileans of Palestinian origin. He further
pointed out that Chile has two Nobel Prize winners for literature: Gabriela
Mistral in 1945 and Pablo Neruda in 1971.
The Chilean ambassador stated that the relations between
Egypt and Chile began in the 1920s, and highlighted the cooperation between the
two countries in international organizations.
Source: Daily News
