Post-pandemic and post-patriarchy will be two conjunctural axes in the management of the novelist, short story writer, essayist, translator, professor and academic Rosa Beltrán Álvarez at the head of the Cultural Dissemination Coordination of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a position that she assumed official last Monday in relief of fellow writer Jorge Volpi Escalante.
This Tuesday, in a meeting with the media, the new UNAM Culture coordinator elaborated on these two points, but especially on the post-patriarchy, a word that, she celebrated, is already one of the ones that causes the most noise.
“It has to do with diversity, inclusion, equality, new masculinities, with ways of thinking about ourselves in a different way, of analyzing and studying machismo, which is also not exclusive to men: it is also an ancient culture for women. inherited and that we are going to make visible”, he declared at the beginning.
For this reason, he anticipated, patriarchy will be a constant in the foreground of the discussion tables promoted by Cultura UNAM and, for this same effect, the visibility of new ways of enunciating diversity.
Regarding her feminist vision, she indicated that “in the first instance it can be exclusive for men and of course it is not: it invites us to think about how we have lived until now and why there have been so many problems and so much gender violence in the world.”
The tongue is a living organism, it cannot be controlled
Throughout the exchange with representatives of the cultural source, Rosa Beltrán used inclusive language and its unfolding. For this reason, he was asked if these forms of expression will be a constant of his administration in UNAM Culture.
“I want to make it clear as soon as possible that from a philosophical and knowledge point of view, the issue of inclusive language seems extremely important to me and I cannot rule it out at once. Even as a humanistic theme, it is important to think about the non-binary and from a literary point of view, much more. If it is a way to include others, I agree.”
As a member of the Mexican Academy of Language, Beltrán Álvarez stated that discrepancies on issues such as the aforementioned are natural within this institution, since language is a living organism and the AML does not have the objective of controlling, containing, regulating or “Put it in dictionaries at the discretion of each of its members or at our pleasure and will. I think it is the language itself that is going to tell us if this responds to the effervescence of a moment”.
Diversity versus confrontation
Likewise, the doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) specified that UNAM must continue to be the site that brings together, reconciles and expresses the differences inherent to diversity; however, she was convinced that the narratives of shock, confrontation and violence in the country and in the world “are one of the greatest dangers of our time and are contrary to the university spirit.”
Along with the express violence that already exists in the world and in the country, inhabiting a violent discourse is one of the things that has most undermined our hopes and spirit. I would like to recover those hopes by returning to the discussion in the university and academic sense of the term within cultural management”.
Rosa Beltrán, coordinator of UNAM Cultural Dissemination.
He deepened that the confrontational discourse, coupled with the current health emergency, “have undermined our physical strength and our hopes. Added to this are illness, death, unemployment and all the secondary effects of the pandemic (…) but it is time to end that fear and that distance, and also to end the confrontational discourse.”
To do this, he declared that his management will seek to consolidate several of the programs promoted by Jorge Volpi, whose work he described as “impeccable”, especially in a cultural management that during two years of the pandemic expanded its radius of action and was able to influence the public opinion.
“The university has the privilege of working in an inter-institutional manner and allowing the concept of culture to be nothing more than that dictated by the laws of the market,” he remarked.
How much will you trade?
The budget for 2022, Beltrán Álvarez responded to El Economista, will be 45 million 764,000 pesos, in addition to an approximate 30 million for special projects, a figure similar to what the coordination has received in the last three years.
Although he recognized that inflation has made fundamental elements more expensive for the cultural diffusion of a university institution like this one. Such is the case of the price of paper, “which, of course, decreases that quantity that appears to be the same.”
He announced that he will shortly present, first internally and later publicly, the details of his work plan. For now, it is in a conversation work with the different areas and the 15 chairs linked to UNAM Culture.
Contributions in the administration of Volpi:
- Creation of the Youth Advisory Council in 2017
- Launch of UNAM Culture Points in 2019
- Foundation in 2017 of the Academy of Ancient Music (AMA)
- Contemporary Dance Youth Company (DAJU), in 2018
- Journalistic Investigations Unit (UIP), in 2019
- Laboratory of Cultural Initiatives, in 2017
- Creation in 2019 of the Academic Unit
- Gender and Inclusion Unit (2018)
- Birth of the Vindictas project (2019)
Three new chairs in 2020:
- Carlos Fuentes Extraordinary Chair of Hispano-American Literature
- Rosario Castellanos Extraordinary Chair of Art and Gender
- Inés Amor International Chair in Cultural Management
There were new festivals:
- Music Against Oblivion (2017)
- Vertex. Experimentation and Vanguard (2017)
- International Book Fair for University Students (Filuni) (2017)
- The Aleph. Art and Science Festival (2017)
ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx
