When the details of President Milei’s DNU and then those of the Omnibus Law became known, we confirmed that there was no sector of Argentine society that was not damaged. Like an atomic bomb that destroys people, institutions, traditions and the material and immaterial goods of society. It would have been very strange if culture did not fall into the general provisions of the law (and the decree). It is difficult to know exactly what the Milei government wanted to do with measures that do not save its budget and that would prevent fresh, green money from reaching Argentina. Although we cannot rule out that behind the stupidity and ignorance that the president and his entourage proudly display there is a plan of destruction and punishment.
In these days we were able to see how leaders from the world of culture explained to deputies something that legislators should already know: the importance of cultural industries and how cheap it is for the State to have a strong country brand with the export of films, art, music, books. What representative can ignore something so basic? And yet, we had to tell them that it is good to have our own cinema, national literature, recognized artists here and everywhere.
That passionate and genuine defense of our artists, I must admit, made me a little upset. I understand that President Milei is only interested in success and money, but deputies are supposed to have – or should have – more clear about the place of culture in a country. What defense would we put forward if we had never won an Oscar? What would happen if our art did not transcend borders? What if Argentine writers were only read by a moderate or minimal audience? For the most part our art is small, it does not receive Oscars, nor does it reach the Venice Biennale, nor is it at the top of the Spotify rankings and it is mostly read by a local audience (sometimes national, in other cases regional, as demonstrated by the many publishers from the provinces that do not achieve dissemination in the rest of the country). Would it be less valuable for that reason? Should we take less care of it? Would it be less serious if it were destroyed? No no and no.
There is no doubt that this government intends to put an end to our cultural industries. He is not even interested in the fact that much of Argentine culture is ingeniously self-financed. For years, social networks have become a source of hatred towards state institutions that promote cultural activities or the development of social and scientific studies. This contempt for knowledge or creation had repercussions on related media. The Incaa and the Conicet were the favorite enemies of the trolls, haters and ignorant people who made Milei great. And whoever says the Incaa, means the other artistic institutes, the National Fund for the Arts, the popular libraries.
If the DNU and the Omnibus law have very defined authors according to the businessman who favors it, the attack on culture is a reward for libertarian trolling, whose greatest contact with artistic creation has been the invention of memes and the conversion of Milei — Photoshop through– in an Adonis as ridiculous as it is embarrassing. They are the ones who asked for blood, death and destruction. They made one of them the presidential spokesperson, the rest are given the ruin of the cultural industries.
There is something that Milei and his collaborators probably sense without being able to clearly define it, but that is also at the center of their decision to destroy national artistic creation: culture equalizes and provides tools. It allows the boy or girl who dreams of being a painter, photographer, poet or musician to use their art to transform themselves and the world around them. They sense that a person who reads books from a library, listens to a rock or classical music concert in a public space, who visits a museum for free or sees a play at their neighborhood club, becomes enriched in a way that they they can’t control. Someone getting rich outside of financial speculation? That makes them angry. They’re like the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, but a little more motherfuckers.
Now, what would have happened if Milei had not gotten involved with the Incaa, with the Book Law, with the popular libraries, with the National Theater Institute and with the other organizations of the cultural world? Exactly the same: a devastated culture. We would have an art rich in recognition, but in a country of poor people. In fact, the culture is already broken. Because it’s no use for an Argentine film to win an Oscar if people later don’t have the money to pay Prime or the movie ticket to see it; because there is no point in having a fixed price for books if readers cannot buy rice or oil; because it is of no use that we have the most creative theater on the continent if the viewer does not make ends meet.
Of the presentations heard at the Congress, it was the one by director Gustavo Postiglione that most linked culture with the social reality we live in. At one point in his presentation he said: “Do you know that the popular libraries that you want to make disappear are a space of social and community support? What’s good about limiting the voice of a musician by defunding Inamu? (…) Is it more expensive that in a city like mine, Rosario, a theater hall, a workshop in a popular library, manages to rescue a kid from a peripheral neighborhood? Or do we prefer to close the theaters, the libraries and have that kid work in a bunker, and then go look for him, repress him, torture him and murder him, protected by a new law of due obedience? Legislators, do you want to pay that cost?”
In a normal country, what Milei wants to do with culture and art would be a scandal. In the current state of Argentine reality, it is a distracting maneuver to divide us and force us to defend only part of what they are attacking. Because they are not destroying a particular industry, or even the culture. They are destroying the country. It is true that they set fire to the library, the television and the record player, but in reality they are burning the entire house.
Postiglione ends his presentation by shedding light on the motivations of the current government and with a question, which is also a challenge for all of us who develop artistic and intellectual activities: “Shakespeare in Hamlet says that the function of the artist in a society is to hold a mirror up to to that reality (…) That mirror is our identity, the place where we reflect and recognize ourselves. But this law aims to break that mirror or make it disappear so that in this way we lose our identity, we lose our sovereignty. (…) This bill aims to erase us, but art attacks with noble weapons. Deputies: listen and vote in accordance with that sensitivity, which many of you surely have. Because when art attacks, who will resist when art attacks?”
2024-01-20 03:41:56
#art #attacks
