By Ana Maria Arango Melo.
Hundreds of researchers, artists and cultural managers have addressed President Gustavo Petro in several letters, even before the untimely departure of Patricia Ariza, calling attention to the emerging positions within the Ministry of Culture and the way in which, from them, ignores the collective construction of the Historical-Cultural Pact carried out during the campaign and which collected in eight points the expectations of thousands of protagonists of the sector in the regions.
The disappointment has not been little. Patricia Ariza strove to be an open and respectful listener and she was very understanding of the concerns of the sectors (especially the music sector) and this openness may have cost her her job.
What has come after, with the minister in charge Jorge Zorro, has been confusion, restlessness, but above all a series of scenes in which the ministry promotes supposed listening scenarios that in the end do not materialize in real proposals.
The sectors still do not understand what the government’s commitment to change for the culture sector really is, how this interim period has the capacity to bring about the promised changes.
But above all, he still does not understand what the great proposals of the minister in charge -such as the system of symphony orchestras and the five “talent search” scenarios- have to do with the Cultural Pact that he hoped to make culture the great stage for social transformations and the collective and territorial construction of peace.
We do not know if President Petro, in this kind of autism that he has assumed in the face of the needs of the sector (which materializes in the interim Jorge Zorro, vice-ministers and heads of departments) realizes that what he does as president has a great influence on the actions replicated by mayors and governors in the rest of the territories.
With a team of researchers and teachers from the Technological University of Chocó, we have spent two years trying to carry out the Department’s Ethnic Cultural Plan, which has not been able to be concluded due to the inability or lack of will of the Chocó Government as the main person responsible for this process. .
I would like to point out some findings of our diagnosis in the dialogue with the subregions and sectors of the cultural ecosystem in the department.
The main claim of the sector is the systematic disrespect and the absence of recognition of the leaders towards the cultural processes, their scenarios and budgets.
The sector feels handled and instrumentalized in the midst of the interests of local leaders. Far from understanding the impact of the processes that they lead, they prioritize staging based on scenarios in which artists are exposed to ratify their power.
With the discourse of the orange economy, many municipal cultural coordinators went from education secretaries to development secretariats, and culture was prioritized only as a scenario to promote tourism.
There is a widespread perception that the cultural sector is a petty cash or a platform to pay political favors where officials are chosen to respond to quotas but not for their ability to manage cultural agendas and respond to the rights of the citizenship.
Each mayor or governor arrives with a personal agenda without fully understanding the processes, needs, challenges and dynamics of the cultural sector, they only listen to their friends and generate few spaces for recognition and encounters with artists and cultivators who are not of the same political line. and that do not serve their electoral purposes.
Another of the findings after the transcription and systematization of the information from the focus groups, field trips and meetings in the subregions is that there is not a single line that exposes symphony orchestras as fundamental scenarios for the development of cognitive capacity and teamwork -president Petro’s main argument to defend Zorro’s great musical project-.
Nor did we find anyone who expressed their desire to be part of national bands, choirs or student bands. As has been pointed out in repeated letters and in the last academic forum led by the Pensar Institute, the policies proposed by this ministry would seem to take us back several decades in discussions that we already thought were outdated, such as the importance of a central European canon in the processes of musical formation.
The truth is that despite all this panorama, and the low value and budgets that the Ministry of Culture has historically had compared to other portfolios, there have also been important programs such as the National Library Plan, the National Arts Plan which collected the successes of the National Music Plan and the effort to strengthen the sector through the Development Department, the National Culture System and the regional sectoral councils based on exercises such as updating the National Culture Plan.
For this same reason, it is paradoxical and tremendously sad that, in a progressive government, we are witnessing practices such as offering sector leaders positions or participation in projects, individualizing dialogue and breaking the ties and fabrics that have been built since affections and shared struggles, as any politician of those who have economically, socially and culturally impoverished the regions would do.
Many years will have to pass to repair the damage that is being done to us when, in the midst of the “divide and rule” policy, collective processes are fragmented, abusing positions of power and the needs of artists, cultivators, and connoisseurs.
Tomorrow May 17, and as a result of a new letter signed by hundreds of artists and cultivators from different regions, sectors and political trends, the head of the Office of the Presidency, Laura Sarabia, will meet with representatives of the movement such as Fabio Rubiano, Julián Román , Cony Camelo, Santiago Trujillo and Gina Jaimes, who worked hard in the campaign to carry out the Cultural Pact and to motivate thousands of people through art and reach the presidency.
Hopefully it will be an opportunity for President Gustavo Petro to come out of his autism and finally listen to us. Because we deserve it! Because we deserve that a new history be written from the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Knowledge, a new real pact with a sector that has contributed to the construction of truth and peace and that has been systematically a victim not only of the conflict, but of the bad decisions, the cronyisms and the politicking.
The president’s time has come. Hopefully he understands that in the regions we are waiting for him to set an example. Because the way in which culture is understood from the central government will be repeated by other leaders and because only from there, from culture, will we be able to build new narratives and new futures that make this country the country we dreamed of when we elected it.