In his studio, sculptor Juan Sebastián Solar is now giving the finishing touches to the sculpture that will be given to poet and professor Nicanor Parra. For the second time, Chile's Cultural Heritage Corporation and Universidad de Chile give this award, an annual tradition until the year 2010, the Bicentennial of our Republic.

After last year's award went to businessman Eugenio Heiremans for his work on Security, Theater, Music, Art and Heritage areas, the jury had this time an unanimous vote for our most famous "anti-poet", whose work has a worldwide recognition and represents the creation of an original and personal literary genre, fed from our popular culture and projecting a new way of seeing our reality, based on humor and recreational spirit which oxygenize and revitalize the intellectual doing.

The significance of his work for different generations of Chileans, its international projection and the influence that Parra has in national life, both as intellectual and as professor, are some of the elements that explain this award.