Argentine creators, on alert for Milei’s “resentment” towards culture

Buenos Aires. The actor Ricardo Darín, the pianist Martha Argerich, among other Argentine and international artists, accuse President Javier Milei of undermining culture in a country whose cinema, music and literature are recognized in the world.

The chainsaw with which the ultraliberal leader has reduced State expenses since December to tame a year-on-year inflation of 288 percent, it has led to the paralysis of cultural promotion programs and institutions.

The cuts, added to the liquefaction of salaries and the recession, affect, among others, the cinema, the book and music industries.

In the case of cinema, the institution that promotes it – the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (Incaa) – fired 170 of its 645 employees, suspended the payment of overtime and interrupted the reception of projects for 90 days.

Paula Orlando, a 31-year-old audiovisual producer and director who has been working in the sector for 12 years, said that “every day the outlook is darker.

I am considering leaving the country to be able to work in the audiovisual industry; The hopes of the sector in Argentina are very lowsaid the filmmaker.

Milei has said that the government must choose between finance films that no one watches o feed people.

Incaa, which is financed mainly with box office taxes and 25 percent of the collection from the National Communications Agency, co-finances dozens of films each year, including eight Oscar nominees, including the winners. The official story (1985) y The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).

Darín, protagonist of the latter, told the local press referring to the Argentine systemic crisis: To believe that what is happening in our country (…) depends on a sector that is the artistic sector, is a delusion.

The iconic Mirtha Legrand, known for decades as a television host, described terrible the situation of Incaa: It gives a feeling of resentment, of not loving Argentine cinema, of not valuing it..

On the edge of the precipice

Alarm voices also came from abroad: directors such as Pedro Almodóvar and Aki Kaurismäki expressed their concern in January and, this month, the Dardenne brothers, Claire Denis and Viggo Mortensen published an article entitled Argentine cinema is on the edge of the precipice.

But although cinema is the most affected, music and the world of books also suffer the blow.

In January, musicians Charly García and Fito Páez were among the thousands of artists who signed a letter rejecting a project by Milei, the omnibus law, which in its initial version closed the cultural promotion organizations and repealed the law for the defense of book activity.

In the publishing sector, Martín Gremmelspacher, president of the Argentine Book Chamber, assured that the repeal of this law would harm small and medium-sized bookstores, and considered that until now the government has shown a strong bias against cultural industries.

Gremmelspacher assured that, in the midst of a strong recession, book sales fell 30 percent in both January and February compared to the same months in 2023.

Dangerous future

Cultural industries generate at least 300,000 formal jobs, although informality makes it difficult to measure their total dimension, said Luis Sanjurjo, former national director of cultural industries (2019-2023) and professor of cultural policies at the University of Buenos Aires ( UBA).

For the teacher, The big trap is to believe that the market replaces the State and in no serious capitalist country in the world do you have the absence of the State in the development of policies for small and medium-sized cultural businesses.

Furthermore, Sanjurjo considered that the government has become fierce with culture, because it understands that it is one of the factors that threatens what they have managed to establish from the circulation of certain discourses on social networks.

In February, Milei published a statement on X titled Dismantling cultural Gramsciwhich targeted artists who receive support from the State: It is a cultural architecture designed to support the model that benefits politicians.

Last week, the Argentine concert pianist Martha Argerich published a letter in which she regretted the Milei government’s decision to discontinue the scholarships named after her, aimed at young musicians from children’s orchestras and popular neighborhoods.

The Minister of Culture, Leonardo Cifelli, later assured the newspaper The nation that the interruption of the scholarships was due to issues of administrative transitionwithout clarifying when they will be resumed.

In his letter, Argerich writes: I myself have received support from the Argentine State when I was young (…). If the State does not support and contribute to culture, the future is really dangerous.