PVLF 2025

Maduro Opens FILVEN 2025 with Egypt as Guest of Honor

President Maduro inaugurates FILVEN 2025 with Egypt as guest of honor, celebrating literature, identity, and cultural ties with global participation.
on Jul 10, 2025

President Nicolás Maduro launched the 21st edition of the Venezuelan International Book Fair (FILVEN) with 18 publishing companies from 10 nations.

Maduro launched the event last Thursday, highlighting the need to celebrate the multiplicity of knowledge, culture, and identity. He invoked a call for an "anti-supremacism" stand and in support of openness.

"Venezuela is a resilient nation, formed after centuries of fight. History, culture, and resistance are opposed to Eurocentrism and Northcentrism," Maduro asserted. "We oppose Nazism and its supremacist past, which today persists against the people in Gaza."

The Venezuelan leader also unveiled a special plan for the delivery of printed books to schools across the country, with the objective of "strengthening book culture among the young generation."

FILVEN was established by President Hugo Chávez in 2005 as one of the major policies of Venezuela's "cultural revolution," the phrase that had been used to speak of Venezuela's cultural renaissance in his administration.

It is held every year and draws thousands of visitors with many international guests. The guest of honor this year was the Arab Republic of Egypt.

The new edition's slogan is "Reading Humanizes", commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of revolutionary Venezuelan folk singer Alí Primera and his popular lyric, "Let humanity be human."

FILVEN 2025 has a broad program of workshops, lectures, and recitals with three broad themes: Venezuelan storytelling; the commune as a site for change through reading; and a cultural odyssey across Egypt, from the Library of Alexandria to the digital era.

Hosted in Caracas' National Art Gallery (GAN) and Plaza de la Juventud, the book fair also features a large children's section devoted to reading and craft stations. Filling out this area are the Orinoco and Nile rivers—important geographical features of Venezuela and Egypt, respectively—the two symbolically linking the histories of South America and Africa.

Being the guest of honor, Egypt has its own pavilion that features a varied portfolio of national writers, as well as a range of handicrafts. Egypt's delegation comprises over thirty writers, editors, and government officials. The cultural program is also celebrating 75 years of diplomatic relations between Egypt and Venezuela.

The event has also hosted several book presentations, such as Cuban historian Yadira Rachel Vargas Horta's "Afroestima Stories: My Curly Hair," where Afro-descendant heritage, embracing and loving oneself from a young age is the subject of exploration.

Argentine writer and representative of Editorial Sudestada, Natalia Bericat, presented her book "Malparidas," which explores gender violence from a historical viewpoint. She also thanked FILVEN for its diversity, particularly the presence of women, poets and writers.

On Monday, Hugo Chávez's youngest daughter, Rosinés Chávez Rodríguez, published her first book, "The Boat of Our Unfinished Dreams," a book of 70 poems written since 2013 that tell of her emotional process of coming to terms with the loss of her father.

This year's fair paid tribute to writers Judith Valencia, Esteban Emilio Mosonyi, Marc de Civrieux, Gonzalo Fragui, and the beloved Venezuelan poet, plastic artist, and art critic Juan Calzadilla, who passed away recently.

The 21st edition of FILVEN will close on July 13 before it continues its journey to other states around the nation over the next few months.