Chapultepec will be ready this year, confirms Alejandra Frausto

This Tuesday, at the Los Pinos Cultural Complex, the federal Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, made official the departure of Pablo Raphael de la Madrid as general director of Promotion and Cultural Festivals and also in charge of International Affairs of the unit, who will be replaced by Mariana Aymerich, director of the International Cervantino Festival.

“I want to thank Pablo Raphael, who was in charge of the festival and international area during all this time. He is a top public servant. We have a lot of thanks. He did an outstanding job for Mondiacult. Because of a family, personal matter, which he will discuss at the time, he is going to move out of the country. He presented us with his resignation, which we did not like, because we love him very much, ”said the official.

Likewise, the head of federal Culture, who was accompanied by Marina Núñez Bespalova, Undersecretary of Cultural Development, and María Novaro Peñaloza, General Director of Imcine, announced that all work scheduled as part of the priority project of the Chapultepec Forest: Nature and Culture, It should be ready in December of this year, including the construction of the Cablebús that will go through the four sections of the forest. The new headquarters of the Cineteca Nacional, in the fourth section, will be ready before the end of the first semester of 2023.

Regarding the archaeological findings made on the land where the Center for Environmental Culture was built, already completed in the second section and ready to receive the public, Núñez Bespalova said that right now they are being analyzed by INAH personnel and that in due course “they will give results and it may be that they are results as important as (for) the change of history that we know about the Valley of Mexico”.

Library Law and the move to Tlaxcala

When asked by the press about whether new reforms to the General Library Law are being contemplated after those promoted in 2021 were rejected by different creative associations, particularly with regard to the Legal Deposit contained in the law —an issue that was appealed by sectors such as publishing and film, when assessing that as it appears in the reform, it contravenes copyright—, the Undersecretary of Cultural Development explained:

“There has been no question of repealing the law that was published in 2021. What needs to be done is a regulation that makes it possible. The points that have now been discussed with the publishing sector have to do with the Legal Deposit and it is not only the publishing sector that is involved but all the other sectors (…) I hope that this year there will be great progress, but it is not He is thinking of making any changes without first working on a regulation that makes conciliation possible,” he said.

Finally, among the highlights of the conference, Frausto Guerrero and Omar Monroy Rodríguez, head of the Federal Culture Administration and Finance Unit, confirmed that the move of the agency’s staff to Tlaxcala already meant one hundred percent occupation. of the facilities of the Palace of Culture, in the Tlaxcalan capital, and, for this reason, another property will be rented in the nearby municipality of Tlatempan, where staff and even heads of the different general directorates of Culture will operate. This property will have a rental cost of one million pesos per year. “I think it’s considerable, much cheaper than renting in Mexico City,” Monroy said.

The objective of the move, it was expanded, is to vacate the dependency building located on Paseo de la Reforma.

Other topics addressed in conference:

• Open the 12 calls of the Focine until February
• This cinema support system has also supported 87 exhibition projects in two years
• 900 million pesos are invested annually to support the cinema
• Restoration of the stained glass windows by Mathias Goeritz in the Metropolitan Cathedral is ready
• The ethnographic rooms of the National Museum of Anthropology are renewed; Afro-Mexican culture will be included
• The new Center for Environmental Culture, in Chapultepec, will host the first Spring Festival
• Ready, the INBAL restoration work plan for the murals of the SCOP Center

Invite to return to movie theaters

During the conference, the Secretary of Culture invited the public to return to the theaters. “We are concerned because some movie theaters, especially commercials, have lost their audiences, they are businesses and have had to close. Hopefully they will bounce back, regardless of what movies are shown,” she stated.

ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx