Loly Estévez

The future of the language of Cervantes arouses optimismin the United States. The topic was the focus of the talk with which culminated the photographic exhibition Latino / Cotidiano USA, in the embassy of Spain in Cuba. For cultural advisor Guillermo Corral, more than 50 million speakers (18% of the population) and the trend towards growth of that figure evidences the positive outlook.
The director of the Cuban Academy of Language, Rogelio Rodríguez Coronel, highlighted the presence, in the United States, of several generations of Hispanics active in various sectors of society, including the most influential groups in the economy and politics.
Paula Canal, literary agent and advisor of the NicolásGuillén Foundation, finds a weakness in the dissemination of the Spanishliterature Spanish, which reaches the reader translated into English and constitutes only 3% of what is published in the United States.
The director of the UH publishing house, José A. Baujín, believes that there is an enormous field still unexploited in the area of ​​the promotion and sale of books in Spanish in the United States. Baujín, also a professor at the University of Havana, agrees with the criteria of expansion by citing the Encyclopedia of Spanish in the United States, coordinated by HumbertoLópez Morales; who assures that that country will be the largest number of Spanish speakers in the world, with 132 million people communicating in Spanish by 2050. On this point, he warns of the colonialism that characterizes the history of the development of science and of the imperialist strategy that seeks to impose its language. He recalls that 85% of the scientific and academic texts published in the world are in English. Baujín said that cultural and educational policy makers should pay special attention to the preservation of cultured language, considering that the main factor for the use and consolidation of a language is its prestige and pride in its use.