Javier Bonilla Saus, president of the Uruguayan PEN Center, assured during the General Assembly of July 2022 that the PEN Club “…today, more than ever, is an organization whose reason for being is to oppose the regressive and systematic process of curtailment of freedoms, violation of the rule of law and attacks on culture that has been expanding strongly and rapidly throughout the contemporary world in the last 30 years”. Let us remember that, since its inception, the Pen Club «…has been an organization oriented, already in the world between the wars, to consolidate a cultural and artistic proposal, based on an enlightened, modern and cosmopolitan conception».

The PEN Uruguay Center celebrated three years of being refounded in 2019; and, in September 2022, it was one year since the second Board of Directors (2021-2023) was elected, which governs the destinies of this organization by the hand of professor and essayist Javier Bonilla Saus. The path of PEN Uruguay has been serene and precise, without losing its way in terms of its work to defend freedom of expression, freedom of artistic creation and the promotion of tolerance, in conjunction with peaceful understanding between the diversity of ideas .

On the occasion of the Ordinary General Assembly of Annual Report and Balance for the year August 1, 2021 – July 31, 2022 , which was held on August 29, 2022 at the headquarters of the Cultural Center of Spain in Montevideo, Bonilla Saus highlighted that “the previous Directive had the virtue of bringing PEN Uruguay back to life after a long period of non-existence”; and stressed that “ for these same reasons it was necessary to understand that, even today, PEN Uruguay is still very fragile, almost like a baby, and that it had to be given time and opportunities to grow”.

Among the first efforts to revitalize PEN Uruguay, they include the holding of the event «Freedom of expression and the role of the press» in April 2019; Following this, the procedures for the registration of the organization as a non-profit civil association before the Ministry of Education and Culture were undertaken.

However, the pandemic slowed down this process and made it difficult to carry out new activities, particularly of a more social and massive nature that would allow the organization to project itself socially.

Except for a virtual conference given by the Director of the National Audiovisual Communication Service (Secan), Gerardo Sotelo, on the occasion of the Day of Freedom of Expression in Uruguay, on September 20, 2020. And, later, already in the period of management of this new Board of Directors, the initiative of UNESCO, through the Ministry of Education and Culture and the National Government, which invited the Center PEN Uruguay to participate on May 3, in the conference «Freedom of expression in art ”, within the framework of the International Conference for World Press Freedom Day 2022, there were not many opportunities to generate very significant events at a social level in the country.

Faced with the new reality that began to take shape as a result of the gradual regression of the pandemic, President Javier Bonilla Saus and the new Board of Directors elected in September 2021, focused their efforts on ostensibly improving the institutional website, with the aim to project PEN Uruguay in the country and in the world.

This effort consisted of a total redesign of the website, both in terms of its appearance and the creation of new sections that would allow new and more varied content to be addressed. Reaffirming the traditional vocation of the PEN Club in the defense of freedom of expression, in denouncing the persecution of artists, writers and in combating crimes and murders carried out against journalists and citizens, it was necessary to have a more modernized digital platform. It was necessary to venture into an editorial policy that, beyond the defense of freedoms, incorporated the creation of its own content, focused on making topics and analyzes pertinent to a strongly globalized contemporary reality visible. As part of this policy, the articles are now presented in four languages (Spanish, English, French and Portuguese) in order to reach a larger audience.

Within the framework of this digital modernization process, the PEN Uruguay Center managed the Domain Validation Certificate for its website, which certifies that the PEN Uruguay website guarantees users security and trust. In addition, this certificate is an unavoidable requirement to appear in the main search engines, such as Google Chrome.

Once this policy of greater virtual presence has been implemented, through the sustained increase in the insertion of weekly content on the page, the increase in the number of visits to the PEN Uruguay website has become increasingly noticeable, which In addition, it has been enhanced with the help of the social networks Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

New projects for the second year of this Board of Directors

Bonilla Saus mentioned the possible realization of a second Informative Bulletin, which due to lack of time, has not yet been carried out. He also recalled that, twice, the Board of Directors proposed holding a meeting event with the members of PEN Uruguay and personalities from literature, the press and art in general, but due to various circumstances it has been postponed. Both initiatives will be resumed for this second year of management that begins.

In addition, the intention to hold an event open to the public to deal with the theme of «The Question of Freedom» remains in force. On the other hand, it is intended that, later on, the organization can find “partners” with similar characteristics to accompany PEN Uruguay in future events.

During the Assembly, the writer Hugo Burel, vice president of PEN Uruguay, and the journalist Daniel Gianelli, former president of the organization, intervened to tell historical anecdotes related to the origins (some uncertain) of the PEN Uruguay Center, from which the proposal of search for material on that subject in the archives of the National Library.

At the end of this Ordinary General Assembly, other participants proposed to hold an event in the interior of the country, negotiate associations with other organizations to strengthen PEN and position themselves with writers and journalists so that PEN Uruguay begins to be better known.