Culture, on alert: for the Government it is “an expense and not an investment”

Before clarifying, the speech of the Secretary of Culture, Leonardo Cifelliin the plenary session of Commissions of the Chamber of Deputies (in which he adopted the government’s motto “There is no money”, and added “it is caste or freedom”), cast more doubts in the troubled field of Argentine culture, who has been living in anxiety since last December 10.

For the official, Culture is an expense and not an investment. “We find ourselves with public spending, not investment”, he stated verbatim in reference to autonomous organizations that generate their resources in various ways, except by resorting to the public treasury. “We are going to reduce the state apparatus,” he added. “We are going to centralize tasks and functions, modify the structure to reallocate programs that will depend directly on the national budget and the central administration,” he said.

In this sense, and unlike what the draft omnibus law (that is, the dissolution of the National Fund for the Arts -FNA- and the National Theater Institute -INT-), The official surprised the Lower House by saying that both institutions “will become active programs under the orbit of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation. “Each one of them will retain its purpose: the promotion and development of artistic activities.”.

Meanwhile, “the INCAA requires urgent modifications. The budget should be allocated mostly to subsidies. These will be up to 50% of the project; The other part must be supported by the applicant. The Development Fund must allocate at least 50% of its budget to the production and exhibition of national films. Projects that do not come to fruition must return the subsidy money, having the corresponding UVA contribution system.” And he completed: “Argentines deserve to have greater knowledge of what is done with their resources. For this, greater control is required. What we are proposing is what should be done: centralize cultural management where it needs to be, the State cultural body, the Ministry of Culture.”

This Thursday’s reactions ranged from those who redoubled their indignation, such as the filmmaker Adolfo Aristarain who made inflammatory statements against the Government, and those who, naturally, do not understand what it means that the FNA and the INT are from now on “active programs under the orbit of Culture.”

The Secretary will have to give more explanations, although there were those who cautiously celebrated that, at least, the CLOSED sign would not hang over both organizations. Unlike Javier Torrewho slammed the door indignantly when Cifelli named him as head of the FNA (after he gave a report to a newspaper speaking as an official), Mariano Stolkineralso named de facto owner of the INTremain calm.

“I understand that what Cifelli is referring to is that the INT will no longer be a decentralized organization. Knowing that it would continue working could be understood as something positive, in any case what we need to know is under what conditions and with what budget,” he said. Stolkiner to Ambit. “I am not official,” he added, “what I spoke at the time with Cifelli was that he was not available to take office until the validity of Law 24,800 was guaranteed or, failing that, an alternative appeared that would serve the continuity and financing for the organization”.

“Cifelli told me that he would work on it and I was waiting, as well as available to find that possibility. Since then I have had no news,” he added. “In the INT, if a project that had received a contribution did not come to fruition, the money had to be returned. The INT only finances up to 75% of the total amounts of a project, that is by law, although in practice the The money that the different projects receive does not cover, in itself, anything close to 50% of their financing. Contributing to exports seems very good to me, although to a certain extent it is already the function of the INT to do so. Maybe not in a direct way, but as a result of the promotion and encouragement of the activity, many people are laying the foundations to export our theater to the world, something in which Argentina is a power,” he continued.

ARTthe Argentine Association of Independent Theater (which was founded in 1998, the same year in which the now battered Theater Law 24,800 was enacted) said in a statement: “Repealing the National Theater Law represents an affront to the world-renowned Argentine theater career. Replacing the National Theater Institute with vague promises of turning it into a ‘program’ contradicts its usual federalism and transparency. If that vague promise were to materialize, it would be an absolutely discretionary program, dependent on the government of the day and general taxes, on which it does not now depend. “We reiterate the call to legislators not to approve this cultural regression of more than 25 years.”

The opinion of different cultural references

Independently, other representatives of national culture gave their opinion to this newspaper: “Numerous former directors of the Arts Fund have joined in to express their rejection of the institution being violated, and it should be noted that they are personalities who exercised that position in different periods, with contrasting ideologies, but who still coexisted in harmony and contributed to the maintenance of the task in an admirable way. I believe in the value of the word, and Javier Torre was appointed verbally, even though the signature was missing. And he was summoned because of his great prestige and all the good he did at the San Martín Cultural Center. In the field of culture we are also distressed by lacking an interlocutor, which deputies and senators can we talk to, who keep their word? “said the film director. Oscar Barney Finn.

For his part, the screenwriter and playwright, Javier Daulte, He indicated: “This is surprising. It is surprising that they say that the Theater Institute is part of the Secretariat because it always depended on it. I don’t know what the current technicality will be. That the Institute continues to exist one would understand as good news; I don’t know if the reaction that the sector had to the news of its dissolution may have influenced it, but what we have to wait for is that the secretary defines what they plan to do, how it will work, in short, everything. Before that you can’t comment on anything.

Meanwhile, the actor Osmar Nunezcriticized the Secretary of Culture by highlighting: “that he talks about culture as ‘expense’ represents a political position with which I do not agree.”

Finally, Carlos Belloso was more assertive: “This is like what retirees do, discretionary. I don’t know if they are going to give games to those they want, I don’t know if there will be contests, if they know the problems of independent theater or any other manifestation of culture. If it is discretionary, they will give it to a relative, a friend, because they liked the work.”

Carolina Liponetzky and Marcelo Zapata