Freddy Ñáñez from FILVEN: Today, more than ever, reading is an act of cultural sovereignty

Published at: 03/07/2025 07:17 PM

The sectoral vice-president of Communication, Culture and Tourism, Freddy Ñáñez, highlighted the importance of reading in Venezuela, promoted since the arrival of the Bolivarian Revolution and Commander Hugo Chávez.

During the inauguration of the 21st International Book Fair of Venezuela (FILVEN), Ñáñez highlighted the efforts of the Bolivarian Government to encourage the people to read, so “reading began to be seen as an act of decolonization (...) books fell to support the conscience of a country”.

He pointed out that “right now we have to rethink what reading means, what it means today in a world filled with communication, technology that is deciding for us what to see, what to listen to and, even, deciding what to read. Today, more than ever, reading is an act of cultural sovereignty from the individual point of view, but above all from the collective point of view”.

The Minister of Communication and Information also stated that “reading a paper book has a social importance and that it is lost sight of because in the book what is in the background is a community, in the book there are designers, in the book there are printers, printers, in the book there are distributors and there are booksellers and bookstores that generate an encounter and a community. And in the book, of course, there is a reader, a reader who unites through a piece of paper, through the magic of a piece of paper with ideas and feelings, unites in a great community”.

In this regard, he urged the defense of the book on paper “today more than ever”, because it represents “defending the material world that we inhabit and that is why we have to consider that when we are exercising strong reading and defending a community of readers, we have to build that physical space, without prejudice to new technologies that can be complementary”.

Mazo News Team