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?

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.

Culture, Peace and Contested National Identity

“Normally, the traditional politician has in his house a beautiful bar, but he does not have a library, they are enemies of the written word, they do not know Honduran music, they are fans of the narco-corrido, of ranchera and música procaz, and the proof of this is that this is the music they use in their political campaigns because it is the best representation of them and best identifies them...."

So, who might we imagine made this provocative statement? One of the Artists in Resistance who have kept the spotlight on the erosion of public culture that began with the appointment of Myrna Castro by the de facto regime, to replace Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle?

Would you believe maybe a cartoonist who was elected to the Honduran Congress in 2009 as a Liberal representative in Congress?

Ángel Darío Banegas has been a political cartoonist since 1985. His work appears in La Prensa, and has been recognized internationally.

When he began his run for the Congreso Nacional in 2008, he was quoted as saying that he wanted to clear out the "monsters and dinosaurs that have discredited politics for years". He also made an apparently serious proposal at that time that Congress members receive only minimum wage.

Starting in 2000, Banegas began to teach courses on drawing and painting, especially for children. His latest move, described as "a permanent cultural activity to stimulate youth so that they stay away from idleness and violence", seems to be closely related.

It also highlights the contested nature of "culture" in the aftermath of a coup and a de facto regime that made cultural institutions central targets for attack.

As announced in La Tribuna this weekend, using his new position in Congress as head of its "Commission on Culture" Banegas has promoted the first Honduran "Festival de las Artes, Congreso, Cultura y Paz" (Festival of the Arts, Congress, Culture and Peace). Taking place in Danlí, it is supposed to be the first of a series in all departments of the country, "to convert public areas into spaces of expression that will contribute to the formation and consolidation of peace, as a culture".

Invoking "peace" as a culture echoes a public discourse in Honduras that predates the coup, but is strongly linked to it. Public concerts and marches as early as May, 2008, explicitly framed as attempts to persuade young people not to take drugs or become involved in street gangs, were organized with the support of the Catholic hierarchy and the business community.

In July 2008, we watched one of these marches in the former colonial capital city of Comayagua, ending at stages set up in front of the cathedral where inspirational speeches were given and Garifuna musicians and dancers performed, explicitly urging teenagers to adhere to "peace". The crowd included large numbers of people dressed in white.

Both before and after the coup, marches using similar rhetoric and clothing were mobilized against President Zelaya and later in support of the de facto regime by the right-wing Unión Civica Democratica and its allies. The rhetoric used in these marches equated "peace" with more intensive policing. As press coverage on June 5, 2009 of a demonstration in Choluteca organized by the Chamber of Commerce described it, marchers were "in favor of peace, security, and democracy and therefore asked for an end to high indices of violence and insecurity that afflict the country".

Banegas' campaign advances a second emphasis, on national identity. The first event in Danlí, and the other festivals of arts to follow, are described as intended to help identify students with artistic talent "who will contribute to local and national culture in the forge of identity".

Banegas personally emphasizes the link between art, national identity, and the outsider political stance on which he ran:

“Because of my critical attitude towards traditional politics, I committed myself strongly to not be the same and to be different; ...I was charged with presiding over the Commission of Culture and Arts, for which we are pledged with a group of partners to make a meaningful effort to manage to fortify national identity."

The first program to this end is the festivals of art. The second is equally ambitious:

"we have created an National Identity Prize that will be given every year, on the 20th of July, in the City of Gracias, Lempira, with the honor in 2010 going to the singer/songwriter Guillermo Anderson."

What is left unstated here is what stands as national identity.

Both programs represent incursions by Congress onto terrain of the executive branch's Ministry of Culture. Banegas seems to be directly taking aim at the Ministry through the Casas de Cultura it coordinates, saying that he will promote congressional initiatives

related to strengthening the Casas de la Cultura in all the country that... in many cases are empty shells, entities abandoned to their own luck.

Banegas repeatedly defines cultural activity as aimed at reinforcing a uniform national agenda and a singular national identity:

“culture is fundamental for the development of a country since it contributes to national identity and we ourselves regain faith in what we do, what he have and our own way of being".

The original mission of the Casas de Cultura was something quite different: "to provide conditions for the flourishing of local culture" through a "policy of decentralization of cultural material".

The Casas de Cultura were central to efforts under the Zelaya administration to promote pluralistic cultural identity; as Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle notes:

we almost tripled the number of Casas de la Cultura in capitals and important towns with their own identity and in remote ethnic communities, Garifuna, Cusuna, or Tawaka, each with bilingual libraries.

Politicization of culture is nothing particularly new, in Honduras or elsewhere. Pastor Fasquelle begins a review of governmental intervention in Honduran culture with the proposition that "the organizations of Honduran cultural institutionality, the Instituto de Antropología e Historia (I.H.A.H) and la Secretaria de Cultura (S.C.A.D.), were creatures of dictatorship":

The Institute was founded with the idea of glorifying ancient Copan as the historic navel of the nation, paradoxically by foreign inspiration, while the Secretariat was established with the primordial aim of co-opting intellectuals and creators. And it ended up deposited in the hands of the military, whose vision amalgamated a folk concept of the culture of the people and an elitist vision of bourgeois High Culture. These were its sins of origin.

Pastor Fasquelle writes that in his first term as Minister of Culture starting in 1994, he began "the professionalization [of these organizations] and the articulation of policy lines: decentralization, democratization, ethnic rescue and support for creators".

When he returned to that role in 2006 he again pushed forward an agenda of "diffusion [of information], rescue of the national patrimony, diversity, direct assistance to creators and decentralization of functions and resources".

Rather than aim to produce a single national identity by promoting a uniform culture, the Ministry of Culture in the Zelaya administration promoted projects designed to exemplify Honduras' cultural diversity.

Pastor Fasquelle argues (as does the former director of the Institute of Antropology and History, Dario Euraque) that the very direction of these policies-- pluralistic, democratizing, decentralizing-- is what brought on the de facto regime's suspicion, embodied memorably in the appointment of Myrna Castro, who denounced book distribution, labeled the Casas de Cultura "Casas de ALBA", and redirected funding to Fashion Week in Tegucigalpa.

But, Pastor Fasquelle argues, all of this "underlines as the moral that our principal function-- institutionally-- is to secure that the people appropriate their own patrimony". He notes that only when culture is locally produced and controlled can it actually survive, a principle that guided policies of the Ministry that encouraged mobilizing local historians and local stakeholders in presenting their own culture.

In stark contrast to the implicit argument that culture is weaker in Honduras today, Pastor Fasquelle suggests that resistance to the coup has awakened creators of the arts in Honduras to their role in public life:

the brave involvement of the great majority of the best thinkers and artists in the country in civic life is one of the unexpected fruits [of the coup], surprising and hopeful. ... our artists and intellectuals have subscribed-- for decades-- to skepticism, not just towards the public cultural institutions, but also towards the State and politics. This skepticism has been a problem for the culture and a headache for the public cultural institutions. But worse, it has been part of the civic problem. Because, to the degree that the critical and creative spirits absented themselves from the forum, politics remained orphaned of intelligence and imagination. The flourishing of culture in the Resistance has engendered a new consciousness, a new type of commitment, critical for the opposition and for the future reconstruction of a deeper and more authentic democracy.

So we have laid out for us a series of contrasts: decentralization versus centralization; State projects versus local appropriation of patrimony; an idealized culture of "peace" versus culture as the expression of critical consciousness.

A telling detail: the time and place cited for the new "National Identity Prize", on the Día de Lempira in the heartland of the Lenca people, implicitly invokes a national imaginary of mestizaje, but now stripped even of the nominal and token brandishing of the Lenca as the primordial people of Honduras.

In the aftermath of a coup that polarized the Honduran people, two models of cultural production are now in open competition. One argues for promoting a common Honduran national identity; the other to recognize the multiplicity of Honduran identities. In the absence of any coherent cultural policy emerging from the new Minister of Culture, the nationalist project enjoys the advantage of energetic promotion by a Congressional novice with a public profile and the means now to promote his own agenda on a national stage. Yet we cannot help wonder if it will prove so easy to put the genie of Honduran diversity back in the bottle of a uniform national culture.

August 25: Talk by Historian Dario Euraque

Based on his recently concluded book manuscript, El Golpe de Estado y su Impacto en el Patrimonio Cultural y la Identidad Nacional (The Coup d'Etat and its Impact on Cultural Patrimony and National Identity).

In Tegucigalpa, Wednesday August 25 at 5 PM.

Place: COPEMH (Colegio de Profesores de Educación Media de Honduras)

(Online sources give the address for COPEMH as Boulevard Centro América, Primera Entrada Colonia las Colinas, Tegucigalpa.)

The talk will be transmitted and viewable live on www.resistenciahonduras.net and
voselsoberano.com

"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.