Guatemala to Repatriate Nobel Laureate Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Ashes from Paris

Guatemala Prepares State Funeral as Nobel Laureate Miguel Angel Asturias Returns Home

The remains of 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Miguel Angel Asturias will arrive in Guatemala on November 12, for national funeral services scheduled for November 15. Asturias passed away in Spain in 1974 at age 74 following a battle with cancer, subsequently resting at Paris’s Père-Lachaise cemetery. France and Guatemala are collaborating on state funeral rites that will place the writer inside a dedicated monument at the nation’s premier cultural center bearing his name. The repatriation arrives two years after the initial joint announcement made by the family and Bernardo Arévalo.

Family Decision Rooted in Political Shift

The writer’s family chose to repatriate the ashes following the 2024 arrival to power of social-democratic Bernardo Arévalo, according to an interview given to Agence France-Presse by the laureate’s son, Miguel Angel Asturias Amado. The 85-year-old electromechanical engineer, who left Guatemala during his adolescence and now lives in Argentina, noted that President Arévalo took office despite resistance from former prosecutor Consuelo Porras. Critics connect Porras to a political, business, and criminal network often termed a “pact of the corrupt.” The family decided transfer conditions were finally met after witnessing public unity during demonstrations against the former prosecutor’s legal maneuvers. President Arévalo “is not corrupt,” he added.

“I believe there is a small glimmer in the middle of darkness, of a very dark tunnel for Guatemala,” Asturias Amado stated, noting that the nation suffered tremendously under previous corrupt administrations. He lamented that previous corrupt governments destroyed Guatemala, killing all potential future leaders the nation could have had.

Decades of Exile and Universal Literary Legacy

Born in Guatemala on October 19, 1899, Asturias worked as a lawyer, novelist, diplomat, and journalist who established the country’s first radio newspaper in 1937.

Following a U.S.-backed armed invasion in 1954 that terminated a decade of democratic reforms, Asturias lost his citizenship, faced a ban on his books, and entered exile. The writer returned briefly to Guatemala in 1959, ultimately deciding to “never return again,” as his son recalls. A subsequent administration restored his rights in 1966, leading to his appointment as ambassador to Paris. His major works include his first published work Legends of Guatemala (1930) incorporating Mayan-origin tales, the dictatorship-inspired novel Mr. President (1946) drawing inspiration from Manuel Estrada Cabrera’s 1898–1920 dictatorship, and Men of Maize (1949), considered as the first Hispanic-American novel of the “magical realism” movement.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Miguel Angel Asturias win the Nobel Prize?

Asturias received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967, later serving as an ambassador in Paris after a new government restored his legal rights in 1966.

Where will the writer be buried in Guatemala?

Following his arrival on November 12, and national funeral ceremonies on November 15, Asturias will be interred within a monument built inside Guatemala’s primary cultural center named in his honor.

Why did the family wait to bring his ashes back?

Asturias Amado explained that the family waited for political conditions to improve, ultimately deciding to proceed after the 2024 arrival to power of Bernardo Arévalo and the public mobilization against corrupt institutional maneuvers.