Panama City is hosting the official inauguration of the Centroamérica Cuenta literary festival Tuesday night, as one of Central America’s most important cultural gatherings returns to the country for a second consecutive edition. The festival runs from May 18 to 23, with activities in Panama City and Colón focused on literature, journalism, migration, memory, identity and regional debate.
The official opening in Panama City is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Teatro Multifuncional Áurea Baby Torrijos in Ciudad de las Artes. Festival programming began Monday in Colón, where activities at the Centro de Arte y Cultura de Colón included storytelling, gastronomy, music, performance and public discussions tied to Caribbean and Central American identity.
Founded in 2013 by Nicaraguan writer and Cervantes Prize laureate Sergio Ramírez, Centroamérica Cuenta has grown into a major regional platform for writers, journalists, artists and public thinkers. The festival was originally based in Nicaragua but has operated from other countries since 2019 amid the country’s political crisis and the departure of many writers and journalists from public cultural spaces there.
This year’s program includes more than 80 activities and around 100 participants, with Panama using the event to strengthen its profile as a regional meeting point for culture and ideas. The lineup includes Dominican-American Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz, Salvadoran writer Javier Zamora, Nicaraguan author Gioconda Belli, Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince and Panamanian singer-songwriter Rubén Blades.
One of the headline events will bring Díaz and Blades together for “Cantar y contar,” a conversation on music, fiction, memory, migration and the social tensions of Latin America and the Caribbean. Blades is also scheduled to formally deposit part of his legacy in the Caja de las Letras of the Instituto Cervantes, an act tied to the preservation of cultural memory in the Spanish-speaking world.
The festival’s agenda goes beyond traditional literary panels. Events include discussions on human rights, journalism under pressure, migration, bilingual writing, Indigenous languages, film, gastronomy, urban development, tourism, football and the Panama Canal’s role in national identity. Some events are open to the public, while selected workshops and professional meetings require registration or are closed by invitation.
For Panama, the festival arrives at a moment when the country is working to present itself as more than a commercial and transport hub. With events spread across Ciudad de las Artes, the Museo del Canal, the Biblioteca Nacional, universities, cultural centers and Colón, Centroamérica Cuenta gives Panama a visible role in the region’s literary and intellectual calendar.
The weeklong program also carries a broader regional message. In a region often covered through the lens of migration, political crisis and violence, Centroamérica Cuenta offers another frame: Central America as a place of writers, memory, argument, humor, music and public conversation. For Panama, hosting the festival again places the country near the center of that conversation.
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