CURRENT CULTURAL POLICIES IN Federico Escribal

Universidad Nacional de las Artes

LATIN-AMERICA AND ARGENTINA Presentation for Florida State

University
FRAME
 Culture as a “ como sistema de valores / régimen de habitualidad
 Cultural policies “systematized efforts to orient common sense
through symbolic productions and trough a communicational register,
with the purpose of modifying cultural patterns of a determined
social group”
ARGENTINA: SOME CULTURAL FACTS
Official language: Spanish 16 native languages (+ lunfardo)
45 million 16 million in Buenos Aires
Ethnic fusión (melting pot) Indians (%56)and africanamericans (%3)
Port-based Independence by “bolivians”
Literature: Jorge Luis Borges Sur vs. Boedo
Reforma Universitaria “Free” access to education and health
ARGENTINA: SOME CULTURAL FACTS
First animation movie: El apóstol, 1917, by Quirino Cristiani

Teatro Colon, 2500 places, built between 1889 and

1908.
“MANIFESTACIÓN” (A. BERNI, 1934)
“LA VUELTA DEL MALÓN” (A. DELLA VALLE, 1892)
“SIN PAN Y SIN TRABAJO” (E. DE LA CÁRCOVA, 1894)
“SIN PAN Y SIN TRABAJO” (M. SCALERANDI Y S. SOUTO, 2018)
Impossibility to consolidate the State and generate a constitution. Predominance of the Americanist sector.

BRIEFING ARGENTINA´S HISTORY

1810 / 1816 – Independentist movement: struggles between parties
(Americanism and alignment with Great Britain)
1816 / 1853 – Impossibility to consolidate the State and generate a
Constitution; predominance of the Americanist party.
1853 / 1880 – Constitution and cultural citizenship: la Conquista del Desierto
1880 / 1910 – La Gran Argentina: liberal intellectuals and major migration
from Europe
1910 / 1945 – Fake democracy and social coercion
1945 / 1955 – Time for Perón: arise of the middle class and worker´s access
to cultural goods
ARGENTINA´S CULTURAL SYSTEM
• Combination of the french and anglosaxon model: a strong
Ministry mixed with an arm´s lenght policy (Fondo Nacional de las
Artes as our local NEA)
• New aproaches and insights trough an half-century-old
institutional model.
• Lack of an artistic education policie.
• Cultural disgregation from the rest of the región.
ARGENTINA´S LAST DICTATORSHIP´S CULTURAL
POLICIES
In the 70´s, Plan Condor coordination sponsored dictatorships all over South
America.
Argentina´s was particularly bloody: 30.000 were dissapeared.
1978´s soccer World Cup was the event thought to divert attention from what
was happening and change the image of our contry in that dark age.
State funding for the arts was never so high as in that year.
ARGENTINA´S LAST DICTATORSHIP´S CULTURAL
POLICIES

Romero (2008) evoques the notion of culturicide, resulting from the sum of:

 censorship and prior-censorship

 public burning of books
 artists targeted to dissapearances
 black lists
 teacher´s dismissals
ARGENTINA´S LAST DICTATORSHIP´S CULTURAL
POLICIES
For Romero (2008) the whole cultural misión of this policies
was to impose fear as the main driver for social
relationships.

This resulted in a demobilized society which remained

restrained in terms of participation for more than two
decades after the dictatorship was overthroned.
“Lágrimas de sangre”
Oswaldo Guasayamín
Oil on canvas (220 x 110cm)
THE DEMOCRATIC RECOVERY
Intelelectuals identified a strategic challenge for cultural
policies: sustainability of democracy.
Arts management was aimed to re-build and strengthen social
bonds.
Public spaces were intended to host massive cultural activities,
to recover community.
Gradually, cultural sector began to talk about democracia
participativa: more decisión-making power for the community
over cultural budgets.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY AS AN AXIS
At the beggining of this century, regional and national polítical processes oriented
public policies aiming to rec
Rubens Bayardo (2008) talks about four generations on cultural policies:
• 1st Generation: forge identities to build the Nation
• 2nd Generation: involves the economic dimension through cultural industries
• 3rd Generation: cultural policies oriented to re-shape the concept of development
• 4th Generation: preservation and promotion of diversity (emerging)

Argentina began timidly to take the question of Cultural diversity and Cultural rights
as an axis of national cultural policies, but this didn´t broke an financing-the-arts
perspective hegemony.
ARTS MANAGEMENT IN ARGENTINA
• Society with high cultural capital
• Material heritage highlighted at the regional level (urbanistic,
architectonic, etc.)
•Impossibility to live from culture and arts outside the cultural
industry circuit (largely denationalized)
• Growing profesional field and formative instances. Lack of
professionalization.
• Incorporation of cultural policy innovations: subsidies for cultural
consumption
SOME REGIONAL TRENDS IN CULTURAL POLICIES
In the first years of the century, the incide nce of Brazilian cultural policies marked a
regional trend.
The Cultura Viva programme, structured on the Puntos de Cultura, which recognized
pre-existing diverse cultural initiatives facilitating financiation, strengthening, training
and networking, was rapidly spreading over all South America, reaching state-level
policies in Perú, Uruguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador.
Even though we can not speak of a South American model of cultural policy
(Zamorano and Rius, 2016) there are common elements and a orientation to act as a
strategic dimension in Global South cooperation.
THANK YOU!

Federico Escribal
Universidad Nacional de las Artes
fescribal@gmail.com
@fede_Escribal

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