GUATEMALA CITY – A Mayan ceremony at an archaeological site in Guatemala’s capital on Saturday honored Nobel Prize-winning writer Miguel Ángel Asturias, whose ashes returned to his Central American homeland this week after decades abroad.
The ceremony at Kaminal Juyú brought together members of Asturias’ family and distinguished guests, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum. The altar was decorated with white, purple, red and yellow flowers symbolizing the four cardinal directions, along with candles, incense and cinnamon.
Before the ritual began, Menchú placed her hands on the 32-kilogram (70-pound) green jade urn containing Asturias’ ashes. She offered a prayer, spoke to the urn and kissed it.
“Today, we are here, honored by the eternal presence of Don Miguel Ángel Asturias, not only in Guatemala, but throughout the world,” she said. She also urged Guatemalans to preserve the author’s legacy by reading his work.
Asturias’ remains arrived in Guatemala on Thursday from France, where he had been buried after dying in exile in 1974. He died of cancer in Madrid, seven years after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature.
His writing is widely regarded as a precursor to Magical Realism and an important influence on the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and 1970s.
Asturias went into exile after a 1954 coup led by Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, who revoked his passport and stripped him of his Guatemalan citizenship, branding him a communist. His last visit to Guatemala was in 1966, when the country was already facing violence and repression amid a conflict between the army and guerrilla forces.
He participated in social protests and backed recognition of Indigenous rights, but he also faced accusations of racism because of the content of his college thesis.
Tat Juan José Chirizcuat, an ancestral knowledge guide who led Saturday’s ritual, said the ceremony offered a chance to seek forgiveness and promote reconciliation amid the differing views surrounding the author.
Asturias’ son likewise called for unity.
“My father has arrived in Guatemala; may his arrival serve to unite Guatemala,” Miguel Ángel Asturias Amado said.
The ashes will lie in state at the National Palace of Culture through Saturday, giving the public an opportunity to pay tribute. On Sunday, they will be interred at a monument inside the Miguel Ángel Asturias Cultural Center.
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