Much is said about the lack of support for cinema, nothing more false: Alejandra Frausto

“There is much talk about the lack of support for the cinema, nothing more false,” declared this Monday morning the federal Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Fraustoduring the initial reading of his appearance before the United Commissions for Culture and Cinematography and Radio and Television.

He explained that in 2021, 259 Mexican feature films were made, a record number, and mentioned that in this sector, Mexico was one of the countries that recovered the industry the fastest, “largely thanks to the fact that support for production was never interrupted.” ”. And he added that at least 900 million pesos are allocated annually to the audiovisual sector.

Likewise, the official announced that as of this day a new public television channel will enter the air: MX Nuestro Cine, which will be dedicated to disseminating national and Ibero-American cinema and whose transmission will be found on signal 22.2.

“We have broken with centralism”

Frausto Guerrero explained that in four years and with a pandemic involved, Culture has carried out 2 million 210,000 activities that have benefited more than 219 million people (in a country with a population of about 130 million people, according to the last INEGI Population Census).

“We have broken with centralism, attention to only a few and the opaque and discretionary delivery of the budget,” he mentioned. “An irreducible principle has been the correct exercise of spending. Let it be understood correctly, the republican austerity consists of eliminating superfluous expenses, not skimping on support for creation and cultural life. In the sector we have eliminated corruption. We completely canceled the practice of labeling resources that was nothing more than Moches in the cultural sector”.

He denounced that from 2009 to 2018 more than 22,000 million pesos were spent on “discretionary allocations” or “moches”.

He added that “influence, public relations and privilege are no longer the motivation or the criteria for giving support. The resources are distributed in a democratic, transparent manner and for the entire country through calls”.

From Chapultepec to the traffic of goods

Regarding the Chapultepec Priority Project, Frausto Guerrero pointed out that the Center for Environmental Culture, the Cineteca Poniente and the Stage Pavilion will soon be active.

Regarding the National Library Network, he declared: “instead of filling warehouses with books and magazines, the product of juicy contracts, we have delivered collections for almost 1 million materials in the 32 states. In addition, we inaugurated 23 new libraries in municipalities that did not have them”.

And in terms of restoration of cultural heritage affected by the 2017 and 2018 earthquakes, it reported that 1,931 restored venues have been delivered out of a total of 3,219 properties in 11 entities.

Likewise, he mentioned the work for the recovery of cultural assets illegally extracted from the country: “we have also achieved great collaboration with countries such as Italy, the United States, Germany, Sweden and South Korea. So far we have recovered 9,327 cultural assets and we are going to continue adding them”.

The languages

About the work on the languages ​​of our country, Frausto Guerrero said that as part of the adoption and start-up of the Decade of Indigenous Languages, Federal Culture delivered 40,000 books in native languages ​​in 500 libraries.

“The call for Verbal Arts of National Indigenous Languages ​​at Risk was created. Indigenous art returned to the Palace of Fine Arts after 60 years with the Art of the Peoples of Mexico exhibition. And for the first time the Popular Art Awards (Fonart) were presented at that venue. We signed an agreement with the Public Function, so that speaking an indigenous language is worth the same as a foreign one”.

ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx