Finally! A New Culture Minister

The circus at the Secretaria de Culura, Artes, y Deportes (SCAD) continued all through the day yesterday, and even into the evening, but finally, Porfirio Lobo Sosa named a new Minister of Culture, only it's not who you think!

Last night around midnight, Lobo Sosa called Tulio Mariano Gonzalez to inform him he was the pick to be Minister of Culture.

The day, however, was crazy. Bernard Martinez returned to the offices of SCAD and said he was the Minister again because he had not heard anything official from Lobo Sosa. Tony Sierra issued a statement saying he had been called by a high ranking member of the Lobo Sosa staff on Friday and told to start Monday as interim Minister of Culture.

From the time of his arrival early in the morning, Martinez was accompanied by 13 Garifuna supporters, members of the Alianza 214 and Gemelos de Honduras, among others. They held dances and burned incense, smoked cigars, and beat drums on the fifth floor of SCAD's office building. El Tiempo reports that even Bernard Martinez danced for several minutes. Israel Senteno, head of the Gemelos de Honduras told the press this was an attempt to eliminate the bad vibrations of the government, and of Tony Sierra, Godofredo Fajardo, and the SCAD union in particular.

Apparently it did almost drive out many of the employees, who complained as the building filled with the cigar smoke and incense. Melba Bardales, head of the SCAD employees union said:

Enough of the circus.

But it did not drive out Tony Sierra, who showed up at the SCAD offices about midday from Comayagua where he had been inaugurating a performance of a dance group. In an attempt at re-establishing good will, went up to the fifth floor to meet with Martinez. He shook Martinez's hand, but was given a frigid reception by the Garifuna there so he left to go to Lobo Sosa's offices.

At 1:30 pm Sierra showed up for what he thought would be a swearing in ceremony at the presidential offices, making him Minister of Culture, but was informed there would be no swearing in. He was interim Minister of Culture because the law says when the Minister isn't present, a Vice Minister fills the office; they told him this and sent him on his way.

Martinez had a meeting there later in the day and was formally told of his dismissal.

Then at midnight, Tulio Mariano Gonzalez received a call from Lobo Sosa's office informing him he had been named the new Minister of Culture. He told the press:

I am sure we can move ahead to construct new agendas, perfecting the existence and elevating this ministry to the level it should have.

Gonzalez was most recently a member of the Central American Parliament (Parlacen) where he was Honduras's representative on the elections commission. He has also been a Vice President at the National Agricultural Development Bank. He is a National Party activist. Did I mention he's Afro-Honduran?

So, not a solution for Lobo Sosa's "government of reconciliation" problem, but we can hope more seriousness for this critical Ministry.

Showdown in Culture

So who is in charge of the Secretaria de Cultura, Arte, y Deportes (SCAD) in Honduras this Monday morning?

SCAD has been run for the last month by a commission investigating irregularities in the ministry. The commission turned in its report on Friday and its commission expired Sunday evening.

Tony Sierra says that on Friday evening, Porfirio Lobo Sosa called him and told him that as of Monday morning he was in charge of SCAD. Speaking by telephone from Comayagua, when contacted by the press, he said:

"My job is to return the Secretaria to normalcy and refocus on everything to do with the artistic, cultural, and sports development of the country."

But don't tell that to Bernard Martinez.

He showed up at his office in SCAD this morning to resume his job as Minister of Culture, saying:

"I don't have any official notification of the naming of Mr. Sierra as interim [head] in this job....I am awaiting some notice from the president that will make this clear, conclusive and official."

El Heraldo couldn't resist a dig at the presidential press office:

The defective press office of the Government House (Executive Branch) which is coordinated by Miguel Angel Bonilla, could not say if Bernard Martinez was fired or remained suspended indefinitely.

In addition, unofficially, El Heraldo has heard from a source in the Executive branch that Godofredo Fajardo, formerly Vice Minister of Sports, was informed of his dismissal by Lobo Sosa's private secretary, Reinaldo Sanchez.

El Heraldo also reported that the head of the SCAD workers union, Melba Bardales, assured them that Martinez and Fajardo were fired, and if they came to work today "it was only to pick up their things, because both already know they've been fired."

So: who is in charge of SCAD this morning?

Update 9:52 AM PDT: La Prensa now reports that Lobo Sosa has not, in fact, made up his mind what to do with Bernard Martinez. According to them (citing unofficial sources in the Executive Branch), Lobo Sosa appointed Sierra as interim head of SCAD while he decides who to appoint as the next head of SCAD. They go on to say it might be Sierra, or someone else. They did not say or even hint that it would be Martinez.

Winds of Change in Culture Ministry?

The date for a report from the investigative commission appointed by Porfirio Lobo Sosa to look into the work conditions and financial management of the Secretaria de Cultura, Arte, y Deportes (SCAD) has come and gone. But that doesn't mean we can comment on the report.

El Heraldo on Thursday said that Lobo Sosa was not happy with the report, that it simply repeated the conclusions drawn under previous investigations without concretizing anything.

Perhaps more interesting, they say that Porfirio Lobo Sosa is having trouble finding a replacement for Bernard Martinez.

Their source, El Heraldo tells us, is an anonymous person in the executive branch, who told them:

"He's been looking, but he hasn't been able to get a confirmation from those he had thought of for Culture."

As a result, Lobo Sosa has extended for another 15 days the suspension of Bernard Martinez and Godfredo Fajardo, and has asked the commission to come back at the same time with a more concrete report-- one imagines, to give him cause for making the changes he is trying to engineer.

In the meantime, the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas (TSC) has launched an audit of purchases made during the last two years under Bernard Martinez's oversight.

There were so many accusations of impropriety placed with them that they had put this auditing of SCAD into their 2012 budget. The TSC has already determined that Martinez needs to better account for 2 million lempiras he spent, and that Fajardo needs to better account for 87 million lempiras, or be held accountable for repaying that amount to the state.

The Corruption Prosecutor is awaiting the results of the TSC investigation to bring charges on any documented abuses.

One problem with finding a replacement for Bernard Martinez may be that Lobo Sosa has publicly pledged that any replacement of ministers who were part of the much-hyped "government of reconciliation" will come from the same party as the minister being replaced.

In the case of SCAD, that means the Partido de Innovación y Unidad (PINU) to which Martinez belongs, which would greatly restrict the pool of candidates.

Of course, it may also simply be the case that, having suffered now from the notorious Myrna Castro administration ("Fashion is culture too") and the Bernard Martinez interval ("Very few of us know the concept of culture") SCAD is a Ministry no sane, qualified person would take on.

In the meantime, although suspended, Bernard Martinez and Godfredo Fajardo continue to receive their salary.

Bernard Martinez, 2 Others At Culture Suspended

Maria Antonieta Guillén announced today that Minister of Culture Bernard Martinez and his two Vice Ministers, Godfredo Fajardo and Tony Sierra have been ordered to absent themselves from the premises of the Secretaria de Cultura, Arte, y Deportes (SCAD) for the next two weeks.

They are to be absent while a verification commission is appointed and investigates the accusations brought by employees of SCAD as part of a human rights investigation of their management. When that investigation has been completed, Porfirio Lobo Sosa will make a decision as to their fate. The SCAD employee union took over the facilities last week and has asked that Martinez and Fajardo be fired.

Lobo Sosa has made it clear that if Martinez is fired, he will be replaced by another PINU party member, not a National Party member as Ricardo Alvarez has demanded.

So what is "Culture" in Honduras these days?

In what could be a metaphor for its current state, on November 17, the Ministry of Culture, Art, and Sports left a semi-trailer containing its mobile stage blocking a lane of a major thoroughfare in downtown Tegucigalpa. The Ministry has consistently declined to loan the stage for programming when requested. It is a former asset that simply has become an abandoned truck load.

Last year the Ministry discontinued the BiblioBus, a mobile Library that visited remote communities, only allowing it to travel if the community paid for the fuel consumed and provided lodging and meals for the staff.

So what is SCAD doing with its funds this year?

The press coverage we have found covers only a few events, but those tell an interesting story: continuing a trend begun by Myrna Castro, appointed to run the ministry during the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti, the events SCAD promoted this year seem to have less to do with awareness of Honduras' own culture, and more to do with implementing a weak reflection of a global kind of "culture".

Not that there is all that much to judge by. Press reports show that the ministry has done some of what we might think of as its normal honorific activities, awarding certificates to some athletes, awarded the medals of art and literature (but not science). It has also published some books.

All of this took place in Tegucigalpa. What has SCAD done for the rest of the country?

At least one press critic answers that question: nothing.

In an editorial in La Tribuna, Miguel Osmundo Mejia Erazo says

The reality is that little or nothing has been done by Culture, Art, and Honduran Sports...

That's not entirely accurate. The ministry funded a concert performance of Carmina Burana, the cantata by German composer Carl Orff. The ministry also partially funded an international food festival.

We cannot help hearing echoes of the Euro-centric "fashion is culture, also" of the lamented Castro in these decisions about where to invest the ministry's resources. We happen to love Carmina Burana, but there is a lot of Honduran music that doesn't appear to be on the radar screen of the new ministry.

This move to a vision of high "culture" located somewhere outside Honduras also calls for renewed reflection on the famous interview in which Bernard Martinez provided his own definition of culture as a quality of the individual person.

At the time, we confessed to being uncertain if we understood the minister. It now seems clear that we did.

What he thinks his ministry should promote is not the distinctive practices of a people that mark their historical presence.

It is culture in the sense of "someone with culture", someone who has cultivated a set of values and behaviors, historically usually those of a restricted class set as the standard for others. Culture as fashion; culture as European symphonic music; but where is the culture that only the Honduran ministry could possibly encourage?

Culture Wars

Parts of the National Party hate Porfirio Lobo Sosa's government of "unity"; it has a small number of cabinet Ministers from the other political parties.

The reason they hate it, and continue to call for the removal of all Ministers who are not National Party members, is that Ministers hire employees to positions within the Ministry.

In Honduras, those jobs are treated as the spoils of the party in power. Thus, the logic is that all employees at all Ministries (who are not protected under civil service laws) should be active supporters of the party in power.

So it galls National Party loyalists like Ricardo Alvarez that non-party members control a few of Lobo Sosa's Ministries. On November 23 he again called for the removal of Jacobo Regalado (Agriculture and Cattle), Rigoberto Cuellar (Natural Resources), Bernard Martinez (Culture, Art, and Sports), Cesar Ham (National Agrarian Institute), and Felicito Avila (Labor).

Porfirio Lobo Sosa told the press to "pay no attention to Alvarez," but of course, the Honduran media, like their colleagues elsewhere, like a good dispute.

The most recently aggrieved Nationalists are 80 or so who were let go by the Minister of Culture, Art, and Sports (SCAD), Bernard Martinez.

These were all from the division overseen by the Vice Minister of Sports, Godfredo Fajardo. Martinez attempted to fire Fajardo (who recently admitted to working only 2 days a week) in July. At the time, Martinez took back all responsibility for the Sports division, including hiring and firing. He let these 80 National Party members go in July, then reportedly hired back 10 National Party members, filling the remaining positions with 70 or so members of his own PINU party.

Lobo Sosa forced Martinez and Fajardo to make up after the July blow up, but the rift is still there.

On November 28, the Nationalist Party members fired from SCAD went to complain to the party Central Committee, saying that the party was not doing enough to control the "spoils" of governing and not rewarding enough party members with jobs.

On November 29, Godfredo Fajardo started a hunger strike in support of the fired SCAD workers. Fajardo is demanding the firing of Minister Bernard Martinez and, in an unusual, perhaps unprecedented move, also called for his own firing.

Tony Sierra, the Vice Minister for Culture, told a prosecutor for human rights that he was frustrated because the Minister had not let him carry out a single one of the projects for which they have plans and a budget.

"No projects have been carried out because the Minister has not approved them. I have told him I don't agree with some of his actions; I don't understand."

Nothing is happening in the Sports division under Fajardo either, because the Minister appropriated his budget. Fajardo, who is a bit vulgar, said of his connection with SCAD, "I only come to pee."

Complaints to the Human Rights Prosecutor's office from other SCAD employees include not being paid for four months at a time, death threats, intimidation, and abuse of funds.

El Heraldo reported Wednesday that the Tribunal Supremo de Cuentas will cite both Bernardo Martinez and Godfredo Fajardo for what appear to be improperly supported expenditures of their budget.

In Martinez's case, it's 2 million lempiras ($105,000.00) for which there is no paperwork supporting the expenditure. For Fajardo, the problem is 87,000 lempiras (about $4,600) he received in expense reimbursements without supporting paperwork or reports on the business purpose of the expenditure. Fajardo specifically is billing the government for travel to the matches of a boxer he manages.

Both will have 60 days from being cited to clarify the legality of the expenditures.

Lobo Sosa has reiterated over and over again that his government will close out in 2014 with the same political parties represented in it as he started with. He told the press:

"As my government began, that's how it will terminate with members of different parties, if some leave to campaign we will substitute for them someone from the same party."

What does that mean if Martinez is found to have mismanaged the Ministry of Culture? Either he will continue-- presumably with the same undistinguished record seen to date-- or Porfirio Lobo Sosa will have to identify a second PINU member for whom there is some rationale as a new candidate. Considering the murkiness of the qualifications Martinez had for the position, that should be a really interesting second act, politically.

Unfortunately, though, in the meantime the people of Honduras are no longer getting any of the benefits they should be able to expect from this government agency.

More from the Bernard Martinez Interview

The Honduran literary blog mimalapalabra on Wednesday posted a version of the Tiempo interview with the current Minister of Culture, that we translated and commented on previously.

Headlined "B. Martinez: Muy pocos concemos el concepto de cultura" ["very few of us know the concept of culture"], this version of the interview frames Martinez's dialogue around his somewhat unique interpretation of culture, which was our focus as well.

But it does something more. As a preface before the body of the interview, there is a passage reading

For reasons of space and of obvious censorship, the following interview did not appear in complete form in the edition of the newspaper Tiempo on March the 12th of April. As follows, I publish it with the parts that were missing. Observe, particularly, the "arguments" of the Minister for considering that he is the ideal person to occupy the post of minister of Culture, his "brilliant" ideas for the management of culture in the country and the curious reading that he gives of the concept of culture of UNESCO in the Declaration of Mexico in 1982.

The implication is that the interviewer who prompted Minister Martinez into a series of revelations that would certainly put in question his qualifications for his position-- or really, for any government position-- is the author of the post, Giovanni Rodríguez. Whether or not this inference is accurate, Rodríguez deserves the thanks of everyone interested in cultural policy in Honduras for adding the missing pieces of the interview. And if he was the person who conducted the original interview, well, bravo-- it is truly impossible to imagine getting this damning indictment out of any politician in the world.

The first "missing piece" comes in the second paragraph of the introduction to the interview. In the original, this was so bland that we didn't even translate it. Here, for the record, is the version with a punchline, omitted in Tiempo, italicized:

The Minister of State for Culture, the Arts and Sports, Bernard Martínez, arrived at the site of the interview as a step in his national crusade to publicize an idea that, according to him, will complete the process of decentralization of culture that is lacking in the country.

He is an enthusiastic man but in his discourse there can be perceived little of the knowledge and preparation that ought ot be expected of a Minister of Culture. He gives the impression of being the possessor of just one idea and he repeats that idea with unnecessary enthusiasm, as if he believes that on it depends the recognition of its value.

He is pushing the creation of so-called "Municipal Units of Culture", of which in the 16 months of his management as minister he has barely initiated five. The objective is to involve municipal governments more in cultural processes of their communities, he said, among other banalities, in the following interview.

What follows is the interview as we translated it, but with a few key exchanges omitted. After the first three questions about how he came to be minister, the unexpurgated interview adds

Do you think that this is sufficient argument for someone to carry out the functions of this post in an efficient manner?

I don't know if it would be sufficient, because that depends on President Lobo, but I do think that it has permitted us both to understand a little farther what the culture of the country is, where diversity and mestizaje have to be inflected, because here the topic is how to inflect cultural diversity to create the identity of the country.

This is, in the longer version, the first clear indication that Minister Martinez has an odd idea of what culture is, and perhaps an even odder idea of the mission of his ministry.

The interview continues as it was published, with the reporter asking pointedly about programs dropped by the Ministry (registry of ISBN numbers for authors) or shifted away from their original purpose (Cine en la Calle, which was funded for San Pedro Sula, but was disrupted by moving the equipment to Tegucigalpa).

But in the short interview, the questions about the latter program end with Martinez saying the real problem is he has no budget for anyone to run the equipment. In the longer interview, the next question is

And the Ministry is incapable of doing anything so that this would be started again?

It's that what we want to guarantee is that the people that come to manage it will have a serious engagement with this equipment, but the mission is to have the ideal personnel that is consistent with the budgetary structure so that both the equipment and the personnel can survive for the purpose of driving this theme of Cine and AV. Our legal department is already working on this.

Why remove this? Who knows? It does seem to reveal a Minister more concerned with pettifoggery than productivity-- which is more or less what the immediate follow-up question gets to.

A similarly inexplicable omission comes at the end of Martinez' reply to a question asking if the Ministry should just limit itself to lend its name to cultural projects, where one sentence was clipped in Tiempo: "So, what we are looking to do is involve all the people possible so that the Ministry will not continue being treated in the manner that it has until now."

Clearly finding the Minister's lack of concern about his inability to do anything of significance, the interviewer asked a series of questions, the last of which was cut from the shorter version of the interview:

Do you reckon that in four years of direction [of the Ministry] you will have worked on the structural question, and nothing more?

Not so much nothing more but that we want to go step by step in the structuring of something that responds to the culture of the country, to what will create the identity necessary so that we can differentiate ourselves from the rest of the countries.

The deletions do not, for the most part, add anything unexpected to the image we get of Minister Martinez from the shorter version published in Tiempo. But one they they do, perhaps, underline with greater clarity: Minister Martinez thinks that cultural identity is something that can be created from the top down; that it is primarily about distinguishing one country from another; and cultural diversity is a barrier to this goal, something to be solved, not understood, prized, or protected.

What is culture? Does Bernard Martinez understand it?

In the previous post, we provided a translation of a long interview with Bernard Martinez that was published in Tiempo. It is an amazing thing: as the reporter pressed for specific accomplishments, Martinez repeatedly said (1) we've been busy getting our act together, and (2) we don't have any money.

But he also evaded every attempt by the reporter to get him to acknowledge that Honduras has a series of recognized cultural groups-- Garifuna, Chorti, Lenca, Tol, Pech, Miskito, to name just the first to come to mind. The reporter pressed him on why the ministry no longer is extending the efforts of the Institute of Anthropology beyond Copan, as was intensified under the administration of Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle. He asked about the existing structures for promoting culture, Consejos de Cultura, which Martinez is basically replacing with decentralization (read: dumping) responsibility onto municipal governments.

To all these questions, as the reporter, in frustration, finally expressed it, his answer was "we don't have the money". So, the reporter said, do you think maybe the people might ask why we need your ministry?

And staggeringly, Martinez agreed that this question might be there.

Most bizarre, though, was the insight into the guiding understanding of "culture" which Martinez purports to base on the UNESCO definition of culture. Again, the reporter clearly found it unusual as well, ending by asking him if Porfirio Lobo Sosa shared his understanding of culture; and how many people in Honduras, anyway, did share this understanding.

Martinez allowed that he doesn't know, and ventured that Lobo Sosa probably doesn't fully understand it.

No wonder. Martinez seems to fully misunderstand the UNESCO definition of culture, which the Tiempo reporter appended, helpfully, to his article. While Martinez never specifies where he is getting his concept, the reporter, we think rightly, draws on the 1982 Declaration of Mexico City of the World Conference on Cultural Policies. That document declared

that in its widest sense, culture may now be said to be the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs;

that it is culture that gives man the ability to reflect upon himself. It is culture that makes us specifically human, rational beings, endowed with a critical judgement and a sense of moral commitment. It is through culture that we discern values and make choices. It is through culture that man expresses himself, becomes aware of himself, recognizes his incompleteness, questions his own achievements, seeks untiringly for new meanings and creates works through which he transcends his limitations.

This does not, as Bernard Martinez thinks, mean that culture is simply a quality of a person. It is-- note the text above!-- a quality of a society or social group.

We freely admit that we are not quite certain that our translation of Martinez' statement of his understanding of the UNESCO definition of culture is quite accurate. Here's the original Spanish: feel free to propose your own definition:

Habla de que la cuestión cultural es la persona misma cuando define palabras muy claras como explícitas o implícitas en el que su comportamiento religioso, su comportamiento personal, su conducta con el resto de la sociedad hace que la persona sea la cultura misma en sí.

What seems undeniable here, though, is that Martinez doesn't know what he is talking about. The Mexico City Declaration goes on to define why culture matters-- that it is a social group's "most effective means of demonstrating its presence in the world"; that it "contributes to the liberation of peoples"; that "cultural identity and cultural diversity are inseparable".

As that document says, "All of this points to the need for cultural policies that will protect, stimulate and enrich each people's identity and cultural heritage, and establish absolute respect for and appreciation of cultural minorities and the other cultures of the world. The neglect or destruction of the culture of any group is a loss to mankind as a whole".

The answer to that challenge cannot be "we don't have a budget". But if you "understand" the UNESCO definition of culture as Bernard Martinez does, then it is up to the individual to foster his or her culture.

Interview with Bernard Martinez, the Accidental Minister of Culture

Bernard Martinez, Minister of Culture in the Lobo Sosa government, was interviewed by a reporter for Tiempo as part of his promotion of a campaign to decentralize cultural activity in Honduras. While questions about this were part of the story, so were a number of less comfortable questions for Martinez, whose tenure at the Ministry of Culture has been less than distinguished.

He was one of the ministers called to task for a lack of transparency in his ministry. His proposal to move the National Archives into inadequate space not even controlled by the ministry, in order to install some part of his enterprise in offices in the historic presidential palace building, was widely decried by Honduran intellectuals. The union of the ministry petitioned him a year ago to remove from office Virgilio Paredes, appointed head of the Institute of Anthropology and History by Mirna Castro in her last weeks controlling the ministry for the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti. He notably claimed that one of his vice ministers, Godofredo Fajardo, tried to pressure him into resigning in his favor, shortly after the union lodged a series of accusations of misuse of funds.

So what does Minister Martinez have to say for himself? Here's the interview; see for yourself first, then we will follow with a post drawing out some of the implications beyond the obvious ones.

Tiempo: How and from whom came the idea of your naming as minister of Culture?

Martinez: It was a question that president Lobo asked me about where I wanted to serve in his government. And once I decided to participate I spoke about the topic of culture and then he decided to place me here.

Tiempo: Did you have any time before your naming an interest in working for culture?

Martinez: No that was born after the political campaign. The Garifuna community, of which I am a member, is a community that contributes a lot culturally, and that was what led me to think of the Secretariat of Culture.

Tiempo: The principal argument, then, to self-nominate as secretary in the dispatch of Culture, Art, and Sports is your belonging to the Garifuna community?

Martinez: Yes, above all because my community had worked at an international level putting Honduras in this area into the consciousness of the world, so I thought that I could contribute something to President Lobo to convey the Honduran cultural world with greater security because I already had an understanding of the topic.

Tiempo: Apart from the Garifuna culture, what other components do you think make up the cultural process in Honduras?

Martinez: The Secretariat of Culture is structured in such a way that it invites to be able to have the different peoples here operating becuase the construction of identity is going to come from the participation of all the peoples. In the government of President Lobo there is a greater integration of the members of the Garifuna community and of other ethnic groups such as the Miskito and the Lenca, so that it's a better balanced approach to culture.

Tiempo: What do you consider are the notable advances that the Ministry of Culture has brought about in the 16 months that you have served as minister?

Martinez: In the first instance, the reformulation of the Secretariat of Culture. We have taken all this time to give it the vision that it truly should have, taking off from the concept of culture that UNESCO establishes. This concept raises the question for us of the degree to which the Ministry should have a more expansive job of stimulating the cultural diversity of the peoples, both afro-Hondurans as well as indigenous peoples. When people don't understand this concept it is normal that there exists some type of mistaken reaction but, understanding it, the very same government, the very same National Congress, will take the steps to fortify it.

Tiempo: Specifically, what does this concept say?

Martinez: It says that the cultural question is the person him or her self when it defines words very clearly as explicit or implicit in regard to their religious behavior, their personal behavior, their conduct with the rest of society, which makes it that the person will be the culture themselves. The great advance in the first year of President Lobo is to open the conditions so that the municipalities will have better participation with agreements of cooperation signed and with the municipal units of culture, of which we have already opened five across all the country.

Tiempo: And from the signing of those agreements, what results have you seen up till now?

Martinez: From there, we are loosening up the accompaniment of artistic groups to the extent of our available funding. The limitations are very great but the most important is that we are creating the political and cultural condition in the local governments to push civil society in its eagerness to have more cultural stability and identity of the municipality.

Tiempo: Basically, your advances have been simply operational...

Martinez: Yes, above all we could not advance because the Secretariat had been left in pure routine, of waiting for proposals, of waiting for us to move ourselves bringing culture to the municipalities when this was totally mistaken.

Tiempo: What is your relationship with the Regional Committees of Culture (Consejos Regionales de Cultura)?

Martinez: The relation continues the same, what has happened is the lack of an ingredient: the participation of the local governments, that also have to support the local committees. We don't discard the previous idea, rather we fortify it incorporating the municipal governments so that they define clear cultural policies.

Tiempo: How is the annual budget of the Ministry used?

Martinez: 70% of the budget goes to operating costs. The rest goes in transfers to cultural and sports groups. Only approximately 3% remains to do all the rest.

Tiempo: What are the groups to which you make transfers?

Martinez: In sports, CONDEPAH, the Olympic Committee, CONPID. In culture, to the museums, including Anthropology and those independent cultural entities that have recognition from the Congreso Nacional.

Tiempo: Why haven't you reactivated the web page to request the ISBN numbers for literary works by national authors, that ceased functioning when the coup d'etat happened in June 2009?

Martinez: There was a serious technical problem that we have to overcome. Presently, the requests can be made directly by the authors in the offices of the Secretariat in Tegucigalpa but we are looking so that in the future the Secretariat will come to the authors.

Tiempo: Why did you decide to bring to Tegucigalpa the equipment of the project "Cine en la Calle" [Cinema in the Streets], that was donated by the PNUD [UN Development Program] and assigned to the regional office of Culture of San Pedro Sula?

Martinez: A reform of the presidency required that Finances, because the project was assigned to Radio Nacional, should transfer all the funds and resources of Radio Nacional to Communications of the Presidency. But we are undertaking the formalities to recover it.

Tiempo: This decision wasn't perhaps a violation of the agreement between PNUD and the region for which the equipment was assigned?

Martinez: No, because in the moment of making the agreement of Cinema and AV they left the project as part of Radio Nacional and according to the disposition of the presidency, everything of Radio Nacional should pass to Communications of the Presidency.

Tiempo: What possibilities are they to recover this project?

Martinez: The problem is that the equipment is there but there is no budget to pay the personnel to make it work.

Tiempo: Can you say then that the bureaucracy has set back the execution of such an important project that has had such good results in all the country?

Martinez: Both in Cinema and in other schemes of the Secretariat, the bureaucracy continues being a serious problem.

Tiempo: With respect to the publications of the Ministry, why have you stopped producing books since the beginning of your management?

Martinez: Because everything is budget. We have had drastic cuts in the budget of the Ministry.

Tiempo: Moving on now to the management of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and Hitsory, that is also a responsibility of the Ministry, why have you gone back to concentrating all your efforts exclusively in Copan, when in the period of former minister Rodolfo Pastor they had begun to extend to other projects in other zones?

Martinez: The question of Anthropology continues under discussion. We have not rescinded any of the agreements established in earlier periods but financial limits continue being our sticking point [literally, eagle's talon].

Tiempo: Could we simplify the subject and say that whatever problem emerges, whatever impediment develops in a program or in the execution of a program in the Ministry has to do with finances?

Martinez: Clearly, very much.

Tiempo: Should the Ministry then limit itself to the labor of "blessing" with its name whatever cultural initiative emerges in whatever part of Honduras since now it doesn't have the capacity to offer more concrete collaboration?

Martinez: This is a Ministry that has always been decimated, that has been totally marginalized. The ministry has not been able to carry out the roll that it should carry out in Honduras. Therefore now we are trying to generate the favorable conditions so that when the deputies of the National Congress discuss the budgetary assignments they will know that there is a people that demands better financial support in the field of culture.

Tiempo: In what other things is the Ministry occupied at the moment?

Martinez: Basically in the structural questions of the municipalities.

Tiempo: Or that is that one year and four months of your management of the job has been solely with the intention of creating this new structure?

Martinez: Exactly, a very hard job, very broad, that we believe remains very short because there now remains little time before the period [in office] ends, barely two years.

Tiempo: Do you believe that with the present conditions in your office, the Honduran population might begin to ask themselves what this Ministry is good for?

Martinez: This question is latent because they don't understand the concept of culture.

Tiempo: Why do you believe that the central government doesn't give to the Ministry the backing that it needs?

Martinez: Because they do not know the concept of culture and not knowing this concept they do not link it to their way of life.

Tiempo: You believe that they don't understand this concept, or right away it doesn't interest them?

Martinez: It's that on not understanding it they aren't interested in culture.

Tiempo: You and how many other people in the country know this concept of culture of which you speak?

Martinez: I cannot tell you how many of us know it but we are very few.

Tiempo: Does President Lobo know this concept of culture?

Martinez: I haven't asked him but he has to. I will take the risk of saying that I do not believe that he knows it fully.

Transparency and Corruption in the Ministry of Culture

Minister of Culture Bernard Martínez was the first of more than 40 government officials called before the Instituto de Acceso a la Información Pública (IAIP), to explain the low ranking on transparency attained by his ministry.

The IAIP is charged with monitoring compliance with Article 13 of the Law of Transparency. Government offices are required by this law to publish 19 categories of information, including salaries and disbursals of budgeted funds. According to press reports on this year's review, 75% of the score awarded to each unit is for compliance with the law; 20 additional points are awarded for management, and the final 5 for reporting.

The Ministry of Culture initially managed to receive a perfect score-- zero.

Martínez, in his testimony, said that since the initial report, he has taken steps to improve the level of public access to information, so that now his ministry would register 15%. He blamed the low degree of transparency on "technical problems out of his hands" . Saying these are now resolved, he expressed hope that his ministry would now provide all the public information it is required to by law.

Martínez has had a rocky history at the Ministry of Culture. In September, he claimed that his vice minister for sports, Godofredo Fajardo, tried to bribe him (with 100,000 lempiras, not quite $6000) to step down and leave Fajardo clear to take over. The carrot of the bribe was followed by a stick: a vaguely worded threat that if he did not resign, there would be consequences, specifically, a campaign to discredit him.

Fajardo responded, calling Martínez a "crazy person". On the other hand, his basis for denying Martínez' claim seems to be that the reported level of the bribe was too low for someone "sitting on millions of lempiras", which hardly gives the impression he is above thinking about the job as an opportunity for his own profit.

But the story is even more complicated. News reports in September said that Martínez made his accusation of Fajardo

one day after the union of employees of Culture denounced the minister for having squandered funds of the institution to pay salaries, per diem, and bonuses to outside advisors.

The claim by the union was specifically that Martínez used funds received from international aid organizations, intended for specific projects, to enrich personnel hired at the ministry. The union claims the funds misused totaled 40 million lempiras (more than $2 million).

The union also complained that Martínez hired as legal counsel people without the proper educational qualifications. The union has tried to publicize irregular hiring of personnel lacking legally mandated credentials before. At issue more generally is the use of contract consultants who are apparently quite generously compensated, information that would have had to be disclosed if the Ministry had managed any transparency in operations.

Fajardo said that 90% of the budget of the division of Culture and Arts has been spent on salaries and per diem to contracted employees, so that Martínez had to divert funds from Sports (his own vice ministry) to supplement the budget of Culture and Arts.

Echoing the complaints of the union, Fajardo traced his conflict with Martínez to his dismissal of someone unqualified to a position that required recognition by the Honduran College of Lawyers. According to Fajardo, his order was countermanded verbally by Martínez, so as not to leave a record in print of this action.

Claims of corruption in the Ministry of Culture were first made by Martínez himself in February. As reported then, the ministry could not account for over $8 million dollars worth of funding. Martínez blamed administrative disorganization under the Micheletti regime (although he kept on key personnel from that regime). That drew a sharp and defensive response from Micheletti's minion at Culture, Myrna Castro.

The latest reports about possible corruption, published earlier this week, have Martínez saying that

while not continuing to confront his vice-minister Godofredo Fajardo, he hopes that the suspected cases of corruption in which [Fajardo] might be involved will be clarified.

Fajardo isn't the only one in trouble at Culture. Claims of corruption published some time ago on the resistance website, Vos el Soberano named others accused of profiting from the lack of transparency at the Ministry. Prominent in this alternative medium was the name of Tony Sierra, Vice Minister for Culture and the Arts.

Friday, Sierra made it into the mainstream Honduran media: El Tiempo reports from the city of La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast:

The artist's guild of La Ceiba denounced the vice minister of Culture, Tony Sierra, for intending to deduct 40% from the total of the funds collected in the TV/radio marathon in favor of the families of the musicians that died in the bus accident of Las Chicas Samba.

(The accident that led to the telethon killed 13 people, members of three bands: Las Chicas Samba, La Raza, and Kasabe.)

Now, it isn't alleged that Sierra wanted the funds for himself. According to Tiempo, he wanted to

begin a process of strengthening, organization, and life insurance, or dedicate them for musicians who, in the future, would be in similar situations as occurred for the artists who died last October 4th.

But critics note that the fundraiser was specifically for the survivors of those who died in this event. People who donated did so for them, not to fund some sort of bureaucratic process.

That's part of what transparency means: what you say you will do is what you do; you don't say one thing and do another.

Trust that the Ministry of Culture will do the right thing is obviously low-- the artists' guild called for the results of the telethon to be verified by an outside auditor.

Meanwhile, despite raising its score on transparency by 15%, other reports suggest that the Ministry of Culture is not out of trouble yet.

Proceso Digital included it on a list of ministries asked by Lobo Sosa to submit a written report of foreign travel, explaining what the business purpose of each trip was.

That's one of the other problems with a lack of transparency: it gives the impression that there is something to hide.

José Antonio Funes protests proposed move of National Archives

An open letter published today adds to the voices of concern raised about the proposal to move the National Archives from their present location. Addressed to Bernard Martinez, Secretary of Culture, Arts and Sports, it is written by the poet José Antonio Funes, who served as director of the National Library of Honduras from 2006 to 2007, and is a university faculty member. He writes:

By various means I have heard about the official communication No. OS-545-2010, in which you solicit from Sra. Rosa Maria Prats, Director of the National Gallery of Art, a space in that building to "store the National Archive, the Archive of Land Titles, and the Hall of Investigators and Analysts".

In the beginning I thought that this was a tasteless joke, or some crudeness of a functionary who could mix up one letter with another in the middle of the bureaucratic bustle. But unfortunately it was not that, your signature was there on the official letter, and, as can be seen, you continue defending the reckless content of that missive.

Sr. Minister, I don't know what idea you must have about how to treat a National Archive or what a National Gallery of Art concerns. But if it is analyzed with care it will be realized that they are two institutions that fulfill totally different functions. In what country has it been seen that a National Archive, where national and foreign investigators come, would be going to be tucked in a corner of a National Gallery of Art?

But, in addition to being absurd, your decision turns out to be from every point of view contrary to the Patrimonio Nacional-- which in your position of Minister you are the first named defender-- since it would be putting at grave risk the physical security of the former Presidential Palace by intending to convert it into the offices of the Secretariat; and, by the same step, to invade with papers and books the National Gallery of Art, would be invading a space that does not belong to the Secretariat of Culture, but rather to the University and the National Congress. That is to say, it would be incurring an abuse of power, another lamentable error that equally could one day bring you before the courts of the country.

Sr. Martinez, a Minister arrives at an institution, such as that which you direct, to construct, not to destroy; to defend the cultural patrimony of the country, not to trample on it at your whim. In these circumstances, I understand well the indignation of the ex-Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle because he worked hard to recover this building that today shelters the National Gallery of Art and to organize in the former Presidential Palace the Centro Documental de Investigaciones Históricas de Honduras (CDIHH). These achievements should be considered "of the State", since they serve to benefit the nation, to expand the opportunity to access the culture and the history of the country. There you have an example, to build with new bricks, rather than breaking the bricks of the works of others. No one has the right to destroy that which serves the Honduran people, and what you would do would be a misinterpretation, a betrayal of your office.

For the love that you might have for Honduras, don't continue the pseudofascist escalation that was let loose from the Ministry of Culture against the cultural patrimony of the country after the coup d'Etat of June 28 of last year, where over this institution flew sovereign the banners of awesome ignorance and corruption.

"Collective memory" at risk: On moving the Honduran National Archives

It is easy, we have noted, to lose sight of the economic effects of the coup in the face of the horse race about politics of OAS recognition. And it is equally easy to forget the profound negative effect the coup and its continuing aftermath has had on Honduran culture.

After the coup d'etat of June 28, 2009, the appointment of Mirna Castro by the de facto regime to take over administration of the Ministry of Culture led to a series of developments that drew widespread outrage from artists, scholars, and writers in Honduras: denunciation of book distribution programs, firing of well-qualified office holders for political reasons, the infamous argument that, in a country with as high a level of economic stratification as Honduras, funding fashion design events was appropriate because fashion was culture, and more.

One of the more disturbing incidents was the proposal to provide space for a military reservists organization in a national monument, the old presidential palace, which also serves as the home to a unified national library and archives facility. The opposition carefully presented to this move by then-director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, Dr. Dario Euraque, himself a noted historian and university professor in the United States, while staving off this misuse, contributed to the animosity that led to his removal from office.

With the transition to the Lobo Sosa government, a new minister of culture, the former presidential candidate of a small party, Bernard Martinez, was appointed. A few days ago a PDF copy of a letter from Martinez to the Director of the national gallery of art was widely circulated. In it, Martinez asks for space in that museum for the documentary archives, arguing that the ministry was experiencing severe space needs that, implicitly, were more important than housing and providing access to these irreplaceable historical records.

Then today, an "Open letter" directed to Minister Martinez circulated, signed by both Dr. Euraque and the former minister of culture, Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle. They open with a paragraph summing up their reactions to the proposal:

We want to make known to you that on proceeding according the cited letter, you will commit a grave administrative error, and an attempt against the Ley del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación (Law of the Cultural Patrimony of the Nation), perhaps worse than those that the Attorney Myrna Castro committed when she functioned as Secretary of Culture, Arts, and Sports. And if you proceed as anticipated, the Prosecutor for the Patrimony will have to take action in the matter.

The signatories, both historians recognized internationally for the research as well as experienced administrators, argue that "The National Historic Archive is the patrimony of the Hondurans, principal reservois of their collective memory" and should only be moved, as it was in their administration, after serious study of the advantages for curating and providing access to the resources it represents.

They outline a well-documented process of consultation which obviously has not taken place before the current proposal, which seeks simply to remove the archives to make more space--for what is unclear-- in a national historic monument. They note that the building occupied as an art museum does not even belong to the Ministry of Culture: it belongs in equal parts to the UNAM and the National Congress, and was made available only for the purpose of being an art gallery.

And, as they note, the art gallery is inappropriate anyway:

Nor does the building that houses the National Gallery serive for the simple reason that there does not exist the necessary space to consult and conserve the National Archive there.

The National Archive was essentially rescued from neglect by being rehoused in a modern Center for Historical Documents, with computer facilities and space for study of the collection, under the administration of Euraque and Pastor Fasquelle. And for what reason would such a project be proposed?

In their letter, Euraque and Pastor Fasquelle imply that the purpose is to use the Old Presidential Palace for general office functions of the ministry. This, they note, would endanger the historical structure of that building as much as the archives would be endangered by being shifted to inadequate and inappropriate space. They write:

It is a National Monument (since 1989) that should breathe an air of culture, of esthetics, and not the hustle and bustle of the bureaucratic administration of the Ministry of Culture or any other branch of the State. For that reason, the "technical record" of its registry [as a national monument] classifies its use as "cultural".

Noting that caring for this historic structure is part of the mission of the Institute of Anthropology and History, they go on to say

Lamentably, the present maximal authority of IHAH, imposed under the administration of Abodaga Castro, totally lacks the experience or knowledge of these needs to collaborate in this sense [of guarding the historic character and fabric of the building]. In whatever way, the Prosecutor of Patrimony should monitor the actions of the present Manager of the IHAH in relation to this decision of his to move the National Archive to the National Gallery.

The authors make a special plea to Minister Martinez "not to make the same mistakes" as Mirna Castro, especially by disrupting the nascent historical research center that was formed during the Zelaya administration.

The question is, have the factors that made cultural analysis of history and identity of the nation in the broadest sense victims of Mirna Castro changed with the installation of the Lobo Sosa administration? Refraining from abusing the National Archives would be one way to show a less hostile cultural policy.

On April 8 Vos el Soberano posted a document dated March 18 issued by the union of the Ministry of Culture, SITRAECAD, demanding the immediate firing of Virgilio Paredes.

Who is Paredes? At present, he occupies the office of director of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH). During the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti, he served Myrna Castro as administrator of the Ministry of Culture.

The union of workers in the Ministry of Culture accuse Paredes of continuing involvement in appointments to positions there, which they say went to relatives of Paredes. They specifically accuse Paredes and a colleague of manipulating the new Minister of Culture, Bernard Martinez, not letting him develop and exploiting the power that he is supposed to wield.

They also suggest that Paredes should be considered responsible for some of the financial irregularities that Minister of Culture Martinez publicized when he took over after the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. They suggest the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas is ignoring these irregularities because Mirna Castro moved there as a high official after the end of the Micheletti regime.

The post notes that Castro named Virgilio Paredes as director of IHAH on December 14, 2009, filling the position left open when Castro moved against internationally respected historian Darío Euraque. As Vos el Soberano notes, Paredes lacks legally required qualifications: he does not have a degree in one of the academic fields specified (anthropology, archaeology, history) or a related discipline.

The inauguration of Lobo Sosa did not magically heal the damage done during the Micheletti regime. The ministry of culture, which went terribly off course under Myrna Castro, and the IHAH, where projects underway were canceled, are potentially important sites of creation of national identity, warped in the wake of the coup. The willingness of the unions to speak out shows that resistance extends broadly in Honduras today, and establishes a challenge for Minister Martinez.

New Government Questioning Financial Irregularities Under Micheletti

The Lobo Sosa government's Minister of Culture, Bernard Martinez, is quoted in an article in El Heraldo today reporting a major accounting problem: he cannot find supporting documents for 157 million lempiras (approximately $8.7 million US dollars) spent during 2009 at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Arts. The news report summarized the problem:

it is not known where this money might be because there is no documentation, since there exists administrative disorganization.

The report goes on to say that Martinez

didn't venture to say if it was during the transition government of ex-president Roberto Micheletti or the administration of Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

By itself, this could suggest continued pursuit of one of the Micheletti regime's favored storylines, of corruption in the Zelaya administration.

But there is another perspective, which is underlined by the final line of the story:

The State has been sacked two times, first the concession and broadening of contracts for roads and now the embezzlement in the Ministry of Culture... [emphasis added]

Beyond exemplifying the fatal tendency toward editorializing in supposed news coverage in Honduras, what does this mean?

The editorial comment links the new story to one that concerns potentially corrupt action that took place during the period when Roberto Micheletti controlled the government, when the Congress of Honduras went on an infrastructure spending spree.

El Heraldo raised questions about construction projects in a recent series of investigative reports. The most important documents over 150 increases in road contracts, and a questionable contract for a dam project. One of the subsequent articles identified Rosario Bonano, who resigned as minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing (SOPTRAVI) last August, as responsible for the increases in budgeted amounts for roadworks that are now being questioned.

As with the story today concerning accounting at the Ministry of Culture, the SOPTRAVI story was potentially ambiguous: Bonano was one of the cabinet ministers Micheletti kept on from the Zelaya government, even after asking for his resignation, reportedly because of a personal friendship.

But the questionable contracts were approved during the last three months of the previous government-- that is, under Roberto Micheletti. So, rather than simply being another round of beating up on former President Zelaya, these stories-- linked by the editorializing of El Heraldo-- could be the start of the Lobo Sosa administration exposing the Micheletti regime to criticism for cronyism, incompetence, and perhaps even corruption.

Lobo Sosa, after all-- and the new leadership in Congress-- represent the Nationalist Party: and they have no particular investment in preserving the reputation of the Liberal Party functionaries who made up the Micheletti regime.

Update February 10, 2010:

Apparently, the implication of disorganized administration stung Mirna Castro, who took control of the Ministry of Culture as part of the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti. In an article in El Heraldo today, she presented her argument that her administration could not have been responsible for the misappropriation of more than 150 million lempiras.

Entertainingly, the numbers she offered make very little sense. First, she argued that the Zelaya administration Ministry had already spent 60 to 70 percent of the budget before the coup. She also argued that around 70% of the budget is never even touched by the Minister, but goes directly to sports federations.

The article suggests that the budget of the Ministry in recent years has been about 168 million lempiras a year. According to Mirna Castro, 70% comes right off the top and goes directly to sports groups-- 118 million, leaving a grand total of 50 million for all other purposes. What is utterly unclear is what Mirna Castro thinks this all says about the potential that her administration lost or never had appropriate documentation for expenditures. Especially since the amount Bernard Martinez is talking about would be 90% of the expected budget of the Ministry for the year, by her own account-- claiming that 60 to 70% of the budget was already expended under the Zelaya administration-- at least 34 million of the poorly documented expenditures had to have come under Mirna Castro's administration.

And if that command of math is any indication, it seems quite possible that it was even more on her watch that this absolute minimum her own statements suggest.

And another thing...

Today's Tiempo published an item in its Riflazo column that sharpens the focus on Mirna Castro; while these items are almost untranslatable, here's the original and my best paraphrase:

Something that isn't hard to believe... Bernard Martinez continues digging into Cultura. He swears that he has found some 150 million of pluckings that were squandered in the management of she who the "resistance" called "minister of lack of culture". The PINU party member ordered that the CIA, KGB, and FBI conduct a rapid investigation to capture those the had a party with the dough of the people.

Lo que no nos cuesta… Bernard Martínez sigue escarbando en Cultura. Juró que ha encontrado unos 150 millones de desplumados que fueron derrochados en la gestión de la que los de la “resis” llamaban “ministra de incultura”. El pinuista ordenó a la CIA, KGB y FBI una rápida investigación para capturar a los que hicieron fiesta con el biyuyo del pueblo.

Cultural diversity and the Ministry of Culture

Bernard Martinez Valerio, former presidential candidate for the PINU-SD party, was selected by Porfirio Lobo Sosa to be the new Minister of Culture in Honduras.

Martinez, a self-identified Afrohonduran and Garifuna, began his career as an environmental health worker and quickly rose to head a section of the medical workers union, first in Trujillo, then in La Ceiba. He has held positions in the Organización de Desarrollo Étnico Comunitario (ODECO), a non-profit that works for social, political, economic, and cultural development of Afrohondurans, traditionally marginalized in Honduran society and politics. ODECO was among the many organizations in Honduras that denounced the June 28 coup d'etat.

Following a history of exclusion of Afrohondurans from politics, Martinez is somewhat exceptional. In 1996, the same year he began working for ODECO, he became an activist in the PINU-SD party. The Partido de Innovación y Unidad Social Democratica defines itself as dedicated to making each individual the "owner of his own destiny", with a platform that calls for national unity, respect for private property, and development of the agricultural and agro-industrial sector, and for the unity of the population based on the family.

In 2004 Martinez became PINU party president, with a term lasting through 2006. In 2009 he was selected as the PINU-SD party's candidate for president, and came in third in the November election, with less than 2 percent of the total vote.

Pofirio Lobo Sosa had already announced that he would appoint all the former presidential candidates to positions in his "reconciliation" government when ODECO requested Lobo Sosa appoint some Afrohondurans to high ranking positions in his government, claiming previous governments had ignored them. The appointment of Martinez thus fulfills two goals for the Lobo Sosa administration.

When Martinez assumed the post he became the highest ranking Afrohonduran ever to serve in the national government, a distinction previously held by Lic. Salvador Suazo, Viceminister of Culture under the Zelaya administration. Salvador Suazo is the author of the book De Saint Vincent a Roatan: Un resumen etnohistorica Garifuna, among others, and at the time of his removal from office by the de facto regime in 2009, he was working on a Garifuna dictionary.

It will be interesting to see what steps Martinez, who the Honduran press represented as the "Barack Obama" of Honduras after he won the PINU presidential nomination-- an identification he disclaimed-- takes in his new-found role as Minister of Culture, where he succeeds the historian Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle.