Medófilo Medina Pineda has been director of the Caro y Cuervo Institute (ICC), attached to the Ministry of Culture, for five months. Since its inception, it has sought to strengthen the transversal relationship with the countries of Latin America, as well as expand the research spaces of linguistics, philology, literature, the humanities and the history of Colombian culture.
In an interview with EL NUEVO SIGLO, the historian spoke about the lines of action in this first semester of the year, as well as the strategies for the rescue of the country’s native languages.
EL NUEVO SIGLO: What were those first action strategies as director of the Caro y Cuervo Institute?
MEDOPHILO MEDINA PINEDA: Strengthen the various lines of research and teaching developed by the Institute and, of course, I have thought about the evolution of the organization from the time it was founded, in 1942, to date. First of all, I want to strengthen the ICC’s transversal relationship with the countries of Latin America. So far we have a fairly consolidated relationship with Spain, with the Instituto Cervantes, for example, but there is some neglect with the countries of Latin America, specifically with institutions that carry out tasks similar to ours. We have launched a Latin American colloquium on language and culture in Latin American countries by 2024 and we have received very positive signals from the diplomatic corps; We even held a meeting on May 3rd at the Yerbabuena hacienda, which was attended by a large number of ambassadors and cultural attachés.
ENS: Tell us about the Social Outburst in Colombia 2021 project, what is it about?
MMP: It is an investigation and exchange on the impact of the social and political protest of 2021 on languages and culture, always with the concern of registering these actions. We are going to hold a conference in September dedicated to this theme in general, to the outbreak and its reflection in languages and culture.
ENS: What is being done to rescue the country’s native languages?
MMP: We are training people from indigenous communities to register and promote their native languages themselves. We have just opened the diploma in audiovisual documentation of native languages, free for indigenous people, and at a cost for interested academics and researchers. 200 people registered and 51 belonging to indigenous communities, who will study with the ICC between June and September and learn about audiovisual documentation processes for their languages. We are constantly opening similar calls, all in search of promoting that it is the speakers themselves who are in charge of the protection, dissemination and survival of their languages. It is necessary to work on solid actions so that the native languages that are in danger of extinction do not disappear, and for this we must count on the indigenous groups of the communities themselves.
ENS: In your experience, has linguistics in Colombia changed in recent years?
MMP: There are always changes in all areas: in the sciences, in the social… In order to evaluate general linguistics, one would have to study the programs that are being developed in the different universities. Now, technology in linguistics and its multiple fields allows us to have more interest in language research in general and indigenous languages. We have some 800,000 people in the country who speak the native language, people who feed their own languages, and that is a commitment that we have at the ICC, to be able to support the tasks of this linguistic reality and the teaching of sign language for the who have hearing problems.
ENS: What have been the Institute’s contributions to Colombian linguistics?
MMP: The Institute is committed to continuing with the register of the Spanish language, of how its speakers build it from their experiences and their regional environments, to look at what differences have been created over time. In this sense, we have achieved very important advances, such as the Dictionary of Colombianisms, which is open for consultation by Colombians and also serves as an invitation to continue developing the proposal from the various regions and communities that make up the country. And of course there are works that are very colorful and monographic in which researchers have engaged with the development of linguistics. For example, through the master’s degree that we opened, we are training a sufficient number of academics to strengthen the need to learn the language with continuing education programs.
Trajectory
Medina has a degree in History from the National University and a Ph.D in History from the MV Lomonosov University in Moscow. He is an emeritus professor at the National University for his 27 years of service as an undergraduate and postgraduate professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Alcalá de Henares and the Pablo de Olavide University, both in Spain; from the master’s program in History of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador and from the Institute of Hispano-American Studies of the Central University of Venezuela.
He has made outstanding methodological and investigative contributions to the development of contemporary history as a discipline in the country and has published books and articles on the contemporary history of Colombia and Venezuela. Some of his most outstanding publications are “The puzzle of peace”, “Common history. Fragmented memory: The teaching of history in Latin America. Experiences and reflections 2003-2005”, “The elected president Chávez: A new political system”, “Venezuela: social confrontation and political polarization” and “Chávez: A revolution without a script”, the latter co-authored with Margarita López Maya and Luis Lander .