The newest edition of Centroamérica Cuenta has opened in Panama not as a genteel book fair, but as a literary referendum on the region’s hardest truths: exile, borders, and the right to belong.

A festival as a mirror of the isthmus

Opposition-leaning outlets cast the week-long gathering as a counterweight to official narratives in Central America. For them, the festival “begins in Panama, with the diaspora as an important theme,” foregrounding stories of forced departures, authoritarianism, and shrinking civic space.¹

Reporting stresses that the event, founded in 2013 by Nicaraguan writer and Cervantes laureate Sergio Ramírez, is explicitly built around “diaspora, migration and human rights,” and anchored by high-profile figures like Dominican-American Pulitzer winner Junot Díaz.² In this telling, the guest list is less about celebrity and more about convening witnesses.

Diaspora as subject — and audience

From this perspective, the choice of Panama is political as well as logistical. One article notes that the second Panamanian edition seeks to consolidate the country as “a destination of culture and ideas,” a neutral-ish hub where exiled and migrant voices—from Salvadoran memoirist Javier Zamora to Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli—can speak without looking over their shoulders.¹

Soft power vs. hard questions

At the same time, coverage highlights the festival’s bid for regional soft power: a polished cultural showcase where Rubén Blades shares the stage with Díaz and hands over his legacy to the Instituto Cervantes, and where publishers, business leaders, and artists mingle under the banner “Central America Counts Begins in Panama.”²

The tension is unresolved but productive: is Centroamérica Cuenta primarily a literary celebration in a rising cultural capital, or an annual summit of the displaced? For now, it is deliberately both—turning Panama into a place where the region’s exiles return not to stay, but to be heard.