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After recognizing the “unprecedented” effort of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the diplomatic corps in managing international collaboration to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, the Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, assured that in Culture ” We advance, with strength, with joy and with a cause”.
This Tuesday, during her participation in the XXXIII Meeting of Ambassadors and Consuls (REC2022) that has been held since last Monday at the Foreign Ministry, the head of the country’s cultural policy, highlighted that “Mexico is a cultural power in the world due to its diversity, which at some point was seen as a weakness, with a vision of racism and exclusion, however, we recognize it as our greatest strength”.
“These cultures, which are heirs to the civilizations from which we come, are alive, are vibrant and have much to express. This artistic and cultural wealth of Mexico makes us a benchmark in the world,” he said.
Culture, neither accessory nor privilege
“We have set out to do away with the view that culture is an accessory or a privilege. The Culture area was positioned as an axis of transformation, as an axis of pacification and as a human right, walking under the principles of diversity, inclusion and absolute respect for freedoms”, said the secretary.
“Contrary to what you may have read in some digital media, the culture budget and support have never stopped in Mexico, nor scholarships, nor support for creation, nor support for cinema, which continues to be a great ambassador of Mexico in the world. What did stop was the decrease in the budget of the culture sector, this is important for you to know because the narrative that is repeated and repeated sometimes does not help us”, refuted Frausto Guerrero.
He clarified that what did change was the support mechanism for cinema, “which used to be a trust with idle money and is now a support program for Mexican films that have been very successful at international festivals,” he said. And he made available to the ambassadors the productions financed by Imcine, through Focine, to carry out weeks of Mexican cinema in the representations of Mexico in the world in order to “show the cultural and linguistic diversity that previously did not necessarily reach the screen. big,” he said.
With you in the distance
Secretary Frausto also highlighted the role that the program ‘With you in the distance’ has played during the pandemic and confinement, “so that cultural activity does not stop”, which became a point of online artistic production that has reached 20 million users, including in Argentina, the United States, Spain, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Chile and Venezuela.
“In this digital advance we are not going to take a step back. Because it was a land in which we had a large debt, and this was a solidarity platform for artists who did not have a job, almost 4 thousand artists were benefited with 24 calls, “he said.
nature and culture
In the field of nature and culture, in which the Chapultepec Forest Project plays a leading role, and which accounts for 25% of the total budget of Branch 48 Culture, the secretary highlighted the recent opening of Calli. House of Corn and Food Culture, in the old Molino del Rey, where the bases of Mesoamerican ancestral food are promoted.
He also alluded to the reconversion of 800 hectares of forest, where various military installations used to be located, to now form a corridor dedicated to environmental conservation and culture, where the National Forest Film Library will be inaugurated this year, and a research center of traditional Mexican medicine in the Ermita Vasco de Quiroga.
Recovery of cultural heritage
Frausto Guerrero also addressed the issue of cultural heritage and its link with the peoples heirs to it, as one of the priority programmatic lines that the secretariat he heads has proposed. In this line, he also highlighted that 5,800 pre-Hispanic pieces have been repatriated to Mexico with the support of the Foreign Ministry from 2019 to date.
“Here I acknowledge all who have contributed to this titanic task, because these cultural assets are not pieces of the past, but eloquent witnesses that can come into contact with the cultures that receive them,” said the secretary.
He added that, hand in hand with the Senate of the Republic, Mexico’s adherence to the Unidroit Agreement for the prevention of illicit trafficking in cultural property was achieved and announced that in accordance with the presidential instruction, and with the advice of the Italian Carabinieri Corps, Progress is being made in the formation of a specialized body of the National Guard for the protection and guardianship of cultural heritage and prevention of illicit trafficking in cultural property.
Alejandra Frausto thanked Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and the Mexican ambassadors to France, Germany, the United States and Italy for joining the legal and diplomatic battle to stop auctions of Mexican cultural property in those countries and to make governments and auction houses aware that The cultural heritage of the Mesoamerican peoples is not a collector’s item and cannot be sold with impunity.
“Many of these repatriated pieces are in the dual exhibition La Grandeza de México, which is exhibited at the National Museum of Anthropology and at the Ibero-American Hall of the Ministry of Public Education,” said Frausto, an exhibition that, by the way, the ambassadors and consuls next Friday.
Binomial marginalization and cultural wealth
The secretary explained to the Mexican diplomats that “the painful combination of marginalization and cultural richness is fulfilled in Mexico, particularly in indigenous areas.” For this reason, he said, the Ministry of Culture has focused on weaving another reality based on cultural wealth and we have had the opportunity to reach those places to promote communities based on what they are and not what they are not. have. And in these cultural manifestations is the language, food culture and clothing.
He recounted the efforts to combat the plagiarism that fashion brands have made of fabrics and textiles from indigenous communities, and the creation of the Original initiative, which is a catwalk, business hall, sales and training spaces, held in the Cultural Complex Los Pinos, which put more than a thousand textile teachers in contact with designers and 30 national and international fashion houses, to promote mechanisms of ethical and fair collaboration between the parties, and at the same time, that the benefits of that activity also reach the families of indigenous creators.
And immediately afterwards he asked the ambassadors to join this initiative: “We are very interested in carrying out these catwalks beyond borders. We would be very interested in getting Original in the fashion capitals of the world.”
creative hotbeds
The Creative Seedbeds program also had space at the end of Secretary Frausto’s intervention with the ambassadors and consuls. ” This cultural movement, in which 11,000 families in almost 600 municipalities in the country already participate, is training a new generation of multidisciplinary artists, with children and young people from highly marginalized and violent communities. “This is our map of action, we want to combat the stigma of violence and drug trafficking that marked these communities and we do it through culture, with music classes, singing, circus, photography, dance, cinema (…) our The objective is that where violence broke out, we unleash peace.” And he announced that the first international creative seedbeds will begin this year in Michigan, Washington and Paris, with the collaboration of consulates and embassies.
Cultural Diplomacy
On the day set for culture and tourism, within the framework of the Meeting of Ambassadors and Consuls, the General Directorate of Cultural Diplomacy, led by Raymundo Castro Arrona, presented a detailed x-ray of the cultural policy deployed by the Secretary of Foreign Relations Exteriors (SRE) in the more than 80 representations of Mexico in the world grouped into 28 cultural regions.
The document entitled Cultural Promotion Programs (PPCs) of embassies and consulates in 25 regional infographics: dominant themes, common actions and areas of opportunity presents “a detailed and systematic review and classification of the 2,412 actions corresponding to 144 programs of diplomatic missions ” of Mexico abroad.
The report states that “one of the conclusions that could be reached is that the Mexican culture that the SRE is responsible for disseminating in the various regions of the world is characterized by an unusual and almost unknown or ignored diversity and specificity previously not sufficiently known. given the predominance of the centralist vision of management”.
The 25 infographics presented as input to the Mexican diplomats “record the priorities and ways of carrying out each of the representations abroad” and the activities and products that, from these priorities and interests, nourish the online platform diplomaciacultura.mx, which constitutes another digital window of a renewed cultural promotion of Mexico in the world.
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