Claudia Sheinbaumpresident of Mexicohas a lot to do in terms of culture and a long way to go to strengthen it, but it must also pay attention to correct some aspects that affect the sector, according to the opinion of artists, specialists in fine arts, archeology, history and cultural policy, consulted by MILLENNIUM.
He flutist Horacio Franco He clarifies that he is very supportive, although he is not close to the so-called fourth transformation. Having said the above, he envisions that the actions that the president of Mexico will undertake will be for the total benefit of society.
“I am a citizen supporting a movement that I wanted to have in Mexico all my life, that is why I am very pleased that the first female president that we are going to have is a person who has a vision of culture and is absolutely consistent with what the country needs.” to manage the national wealth, of scientists, artists and cultural protagonists, to really be able to continue working, advancing and above all continue addressing the scope of science, arts and culture.”
Franco, with 45 years of artistic career, assures that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador gave “truly masterful support to the seedbeds of the communities that needed it, since they had never been given a budget since they did not see themselves visualized. That’s why creators and artists stopped being given so much money and so much prominence, and that’s why many people felt betrayed and unprotected by the government that had previously given them much more sponsorship.”
He also mentioned support for the protection and restoration of the architectural heritage affected by the 2017 earthquakes. The previous government, Franco affirms, protected the workers who were on the payroll, but there is no extra money for projects, festivals, exhibitions and museums, as well that the great challenge of the beginning government will be to achieve a true balance so that what was not given to artists is now granted to them and to continue supporting indigenous communities and the most marginalized.
“The only thing we artists want is for the budget to be as indicated by UNESCO, 1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, so that it can be authorized by the Chamber of Deputies, and thus there will be more resources for culture,” considers the flutist. .
Agustín Sánchez, writer, historian, specialist in the development of Mexican culture and researcher of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) says that the head of the federal executive will have an impossible mission, because she will have to rebuild everything that was destroyed.
“There was a line, good, bad or average, of a cultural project that disappeared in this six-year term and I think it will be difficult to restore it, since it will take a long time. I don’t see the size of the new Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, since her duties at the head of the Ministry of Culture of Mexico City were solely to develop a section of shows and massive concerts in the zócalo, without a true cultural policy.”
Remember that when he participated in the first government of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, there was a motto: “A city for all,” which became blurred over time.
“Today the Historic Center is a prison, it is a wall alien to society. The cultural policy “It has been totally autocratic, limited only to the groups close to power, anyone who has made even the slightest criticism of this government is excluded and that will hardly change because it follows the same structure.”
He points out that the museums in the country They lack a budget, “they are practically abandoned because the entire budget went to the Mayan Train and Chapultepec.”
His conclusion is one of enormous pessimism, as he states that there is no cultural policy and to this is added the minimal budget that the cultural sector will have.
Felipe Echenique, historian and researcher of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), questions the destruction of the archaeological heritage of Mexico registered as a result of the construction of the Mayan Train, and anticipates that the damage against the heritage will continue as soon as the massive infrastructure program with 1,500 kilometers of cargo and the completion of the Chiapas line with Guatemala is put into operation, as well as with the construction of passenger railway lines to the north of the country.
“AMLO’s federal government indiscriminately destroyed, altered and carried out bad interventions on archaeological and historical monuments along the Mayan Train route; “We made a complaint that has not been answered even though we have ratified it.”
He affirms that all INAH resources went to the Mayan Train and with the ratification of Diego Prieto as head of INAH, he does not predict that there will be positive results in terms of heritage preservation.
“With the project to expand and create train tracks, there will not be enough archaeologists to follow the constructions; At the INAH there are around 500 experts in this matter.”
“In the 1,500 kilometers of construction of the Mayan Train, I did the calculation and there is room for 15,000 Azteca Stadiums as an area to intervene. If we introduce the variables we have that in four years of work by 500 specialists who took care of them, the data gives us that each specialist had to work in one year the equivalent of 75 Aztec stadiums, whose geographical, natural, social, anthropological and historical composition are totally diverse and complex. The question is, if under those complex and complicated times and spaces the 500 specialists were actually able to carry out work in accordance with the current regulations of investigating, conserving, preserving and disseminating the products of research? Unfortunately, the same thing will happen with the new railway project of the current president of Mexico.”
From the vision of Arturo Saucedo, an expert in cultural legislation and public policies, the president of Mexico will work with a very limited budget.
“We have an accumulated budget deficit of 6.6 billion pesos, plus the weight of the debt. Obviously there is not much margin and considering that in these six years culture has been abandoned, the worse. Practically a large part of the resources of the culture sector were allocated to the centralist Chapultepec project, and now the operation is going to take at least 500 million pesos.”
From his point of view, it is desirable to have someone responsible for culture with the profile to be able to negotiate the major problems that the sector is facing: “there is a very strong problem of non-payment of labor and a lack of investment in the cultural infrastructure. In a word, there is an abandonment of the cultural policy of the states and the 2,600 municipalities.”
“The federal Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel, I don’t think she understands public finances or cultural policies, and Alejandra de La Paz as the new director of the National Institute of Fine Arts, violates with her appointment the law with which it was created the INBAL, which establishes that to direct said institution you must have an extensive artistic career. So, over the next six years we will see a tragedy, the product of an opera buffa.”
PCL
