The National Archive of Honduras and state irresponsibility

That's the headline on an editorial by historian Edgar Soriano Ortiz published in Sunday's edition of Honduras' Tiempo.

This documentary resource, urgently important for the history of the country, was moved in 2007 to the Antigua Casa Presidencial, a building turned into a national monument and at the time designated as the home of a new center for documentary research. It began the processes Soriano Ortiz notes are urgently needed:

A process of classification and advanced digitization that would permit investigators and people interested in the assignment of legal titles to land to have access with better facilities.

Soriano Ortiz reports particular neglect of the national archives during the current administration, saying that

in the present administration the situation of the National Archive has becoming increasingly chaotic to the extent that for the past half year, the colonial document collection, that has documents from 1605, fell on the floor after the old shelving on which they were supported collapsed and the authorities of the Secretariat of Culture, Arts and Sports are stalling the topic of buying new and strong shelves on which to place this valuable national patrimony. Without doubt, someone here is visibly irresponsible, it is necessary to demand responsibility of Tulio Mariano González (the Secretary of Culture) and the rest of the officials so that they don't continue to commit such barbarities.

This neglect, he argues, is not random. The National Archives can be threatening to people in power, and he says that Honduran intellectuals have noticed a pattern of "intentional neglect" of cultural institutions under the current administration:

the institutions that safeguard the cultural patrimony and the few artistic spaces have been condemned for a long time to intentional neglect. These spaces are vital to fortify civic participation and consequently are a threat to the political and economic elites that govern the country by force.

That may sound like an extreme claim, but there has been an incredible decay of management of cultural institutions under the appointees to the Secretary of Culture and Arts position, starting with the amazingly ignorant Myrna Castro, appointed during the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti.

The pattern has been pretty clear: withdrawn support from grass-roots initiatives that supported local historians; a renewed focus on Copan, valuable as a tourist attraction, to the exclusion of support of the development of other archaeological sites as spaces for public understanding of the broader history of the nation; the lack of funding for major historic museums; all of these are part of a pattern, within which the neglect of the National Archives is a consistent piece.

Is the issue that knowledge is power, so encouraging public development of historical knowledge is threatening?

Archival documents do offer a specific opportunity that may challenge power: land documents can be used to support legal claims when land has been alienated from communities or individuals marginalized in Honduran society, such as indigenous people or the Garifuna.

Documents from the recent past were recovered from the National Hemeroteca (the newspaper archive) during the de facto regime, showing that the architects of the coup were themselves part of an earlier attempt to change the constitution to allow re-election to the presidency.

So yes, a case can be made that the neglect is a deliberate response to a sense that history can threaten the powerful.

But equally, it may simply be that appointing unqualified people to positions dealing with cultural affairs introduces management that doesn't understand that a fragile piece of paper from 1605 has any value whatsoever.

Myrna Castro clearly had no time for the past, or even for conventional forms of culture: she famously said "Fashion, too, is culture" when called on using the ministry's resources for Tegucigalpa Fashion Week in 2009.

Bernard Martinez, her successor, revealed a bizarre understanding of the very word culture, not as a shared heritage of a people, but perhaps more in line with the nineteenth century idea of culture as "cultivation", an attribute of the cultured class.

Myrna Castro's hand-picked appointee to run the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, whose expertise is in management, has shown confusion about the role of the Institute (which is to protect the cultural heritage and share knowledge with the public), describing his goals as increasing tourist visitation to Copan, before completely falling into pseudo-science with his outrageous claims that "Ciudad Blanca" is a vast and unknown city lurking in the Honduran jungle.

Curiously, Soriano Ortiz describes the neglect of the National Archives as a constant feature of modern Honduran policy, missing the opportunity to underline another possible reason for the active policy of neglect that has afflicted the cultural sector of Honduras.

In fact, during the administration of Manuel Zelaya, the Minister of Culture, Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, was a professional historian who supported all the programs that were abandoned or actively reversed by Myrna Castro and her successors.

He appointed as head of the Institute of Anthropology and History another Honduran historian, Darío Euraque, who moved the archives to its present home in the Antigua Casa Presidencial, and lost his position in part by publicly opposing the attempt to use that historic building for military reserve officers, a violation of the 1954 Convention of the Hague.

Euraque did more than just move the documents into this space. He created the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de Honduras (CDIHH), which (among other things) began the process of digitization Soriano Ortiz notes is critically needed.

Scholars and artists called attention to the disaster in Honduran culture, publishing memos in August 2010 from Bernard Martinez, saying his ministry needed office space, and asking the director of the National Art Gallery to provide space for the National Archives.

The tragedy of the National Archives is not just collapsing shelves and foot-dragging about replacing them. It is a continued outcome of the coup of 2009.

Whether current neglect is malice, crafty policy to prevent populist use of records, or just plain ignorance, it is not just Honduras' loss: the entire world is diminished when we lose the capacity for surprise about the past that primary documents can give us.

New Culture Warriors, New Tactics

The culture war in Honduras is heating up-- and there's a new player involved.

Yesterday the Minister of  Culture, Tulio Mariano González, asked the director of the Casa Morazan (Morazan House) Museum to resign.  Gonzalez wrote:

"If you don't want to work in harmony with the authorities and criticize the government, please resign so that other people who have the will can take you're place."

Carlos Turcios, the Director of the museum, has told the press that his entire budget will be used up on July 31 so the museum will have to fire staff unless the government allocates more funds to pay the staff to keep it open. 

González told the press that the museum was not going to be allowed to close.  He said:

 "NASA also had its budget cut but that doesn't mean that NASA is closing.  What we need to do is improve our offering, improve the initiative, make more work and this is what we're doing in all parts."

Except that NASA would close if you cut its budget so that it could not pay the people it needs to carry out its mission.  A museum cannot stay open without staff to operate it.

According to Turcios, the museum has 8 employees, and enough money to pay half their salaries through July 31. After that, he has 74,000 lempiras ($3700) to pay people for the rest of the year.  He told Conexihon that

"After the 31 of July there is no budget for us but we will not close the Casa Morazan."

Meanwhile, González says the museum is only closing temporarily.  La Prensa says he told radio station HRN that

"The Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History is doing a restoration and decided to close it [the Casa Morazan] for two weeks while doing the work to provide better service."

(The Minister may be referring to the installation of 46 objects that the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History agreed to loan the Casa Morazan.)

So why did Gonzaléz call for Turcios to resign, when he is apparently volunteering to run the museum, for free?

Turcios thinks that González is operating under a misunderstanding.

The museum rented space for a week long community action seminar by the Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores de Honduras (CUTH). A group called the Frente Amplio de Trabajadores de la Cultura y el Arte (Broad Coalition of Workers in Culture and Art) was included.

The Frente Amplio is a new player on the scene of culture, organized earlier this summer with an agenda prominently calling for the resignation of the current Minister of Culture. The original announcement of its formation indicted "the total disfunctionality of the Secretaría de Cultura, Artes y Deportes (SCAD) and the head of that same institution, Tulio Mariano Gonzales". Their conclusion was that the leaders of SCAD "are not interested at all in culture" and have put historic patrimony in danger "through governmental indolence".

The initial statements about the formation of the Frente Amplio say that "this is not a closed group, since all artists, intellectuals, and creators of art" are welcome. So unlike the unions of SCAD and other cultural entities like IHAH, which have either gone along with decisions of the ministry and its appointees, or suffered retaliation for efforts to correct mismanagement, the Frente Amplio is not subject to the same kinds of pressures that can be placed on employees.

On Monday the Frente Amplio denounced the virtual abandonment of local Casas de Cultura by the Ministry of Culture, and mismanagement of national museums. They singled out the Casa Morazan, noting that "the budget has been reduced to 800,000 lempiras (some 39,000 dollars), so that it will cease operations this coming [July] 31".

Turcios says some "political activists" in the Secretaria de Cultura, Artes, y Deportes, Minister González's organization, used this statement as a pretext to denounce him for supposedly allowing "political" activities to take place in the museum, resulting in the Minister asking for his resignation.

We think the Minister can't take criticism-- and is unwilling to admit that under his guidance, cultural organizations are falling apart in the country.

Culture Update

The Honduran Secretary of Culture, Arts, and Sports (SCAD), Tulio Mariano Gonzalez, has been criticized fiercely for failure to support national cultural institutions, many of which are warning that without funding, they may have to close.

Gonzalez told reporters last week that the administration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa does not intend to close any cultural institutions.  He specifically told reporters it was not their intention to close national schools like the National Academy of Art.  Gonzalez said:

there is no danger of any museum closing...we invite those who lie and manipulate to visit museums.

It was a strange response to the series of press reports on cultural institutions in danger of closing.  It echoes his response to the director of the Casa de Morazan historical house museum, who announced the museum would close on June 30.  At that time Gonzalez said:

"The Morazan House museum should be open".

He offered to meet with employees of the Casa de Morazan, but did not offer more funding. 

What he did do was arrange with the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History to loan 42 historical objects and paintings to the museum, which still is warning it will close for lack of funding.

It has been two years since the government allocated any budget to the National School of Art. According to faculty member Gabriel Zaldívar:

The school is in a crisis situation, it is acephalic and the post of director was abolished [by the government], there are problems in the building, a lack of equipment and supplies to teach classes.

With the Minister of Culture refusing to respond, the Art School will seek a meeting with the Minister of Education to look for a solution.
Meanwhile, the Casa de Morazan museum began its countdown to closing at the end of June.

SCAD response?  We will not permit any museum to close. But don't ask us for any money.

The Sad State of Culture in Honduras

We remind you that Honduras is not a petroleum producing country; that there are deficiencies, limitations, but we are doing all that's possible to resolve the problem because culture is a national priority.

So said the Minister of Culture, Tulio Mariano Gonzalez, when asked on Monday why his office was obstructing the transfer of funds to the National Gallery of Art.

The state of cultural institutions in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, several of which are dependencies of the Secretaria de Cultura, Artes, y Deportes (SCAD), suggests that culture is anything but a national priority.

Start with the budget. The 2012 budget allocates 234 million lempiras ($11.7 million dollars) as budget for the Secretaria de Cultura, Artes, y Deportes. Only 26 million ($1.3 million dollars)  are available for promoting culture in Honduras.  The rest of the money goes to sports promotion, and to paying the salaries of SCAD employees.  The 2012 budget also authorized a 1.5 million lempira ($75,000)  cut of SCAD's budget from the allocated amount to be put into a general fund for government social programs. 

The 2013 budget cut 3.8 million lempiras ($190,000) from the essentially static SCAD budget.

That leaves very little for cultural programming. And it is particularly hard for cultural institutions when the meager funding available is not transferred to them.

The big story in all the Honduran papers recently was that the National Gallery of Art closed for four days last week because the central government had failed to transfer its budget allocation to the entity, which in turn, had not been able to pay its employees for the last six months. 

SCAD has 2.7 million lempiras in its budget for the National Gallery of Art, yet has not given it any support this year.  According to the budget proposal approved by Congress, SCAD owes the National Gallery of Art 900,000 lempiras (about $45,000 dollars) from this year's budget allocation so far.

SCAD acknowledges it owes the Gallery that money, and had done the paperwork to authorize the transfer but then revoked it, leading Tulio Mariano Gonzalez to claim that culture is a national priority, no matter what it actually seems is happening.

On the basis of assurances that it would get its money, the National Gallery of Art reopened on Monday, with volunteers since it still lacks funds to pay the staff. 

But the money transfer didn't come. 

When contacted Monday by El Heraldo to find out why the transfer hadn't happened after all the promises, the National Treasurer, Luis Felipe Garcia, said that Minister Gonzalez had revoked the authorization to transfer the funds.  Gonzalez told El Heraldo it was just a technical problem that he hoped would be fixed in a few hours, but totally failed to explain the revocation of the authorization to pay the Gallery.  Instead he said that technical problems happen nearly daily in the moving of funds between SCAD and the central bank, and he hoped they'd be fixed soon.

And it's not just the National Gallery of Art that's being stiffed to the point of closing. 

The Casa Morazan, a new national museum opened last year, will close its doors to the public on July 31.  The 2012 budget cut 800,000 lempiras from its operating budget of 1.5 million: a 53% budget cut.  So, once the money runs out in July, the museum will close. 

Minister Gonzalez says they should remain open, but offers no more funding.  Instead he said:

Here in SCAD we have the lowest budget in history and the people are witness that we are doing the activities that most resonate in the last few years, which says that with enthusiasm and passion we can do better activities.

You can't keep a museum open with "enthusiasm" for very long.

Want more?

The National Conservatory of Music, homeless since 1998 when Hurricane Mitch destroyed its original home, has moved from rented space to rented space as SCAD seeks to reduce the rent it pays for space for the Conservatory.

The National Arts School lost all government support from this year's budget and was forced to close. 

The National Newspapers Library, another SCAD dependency,  has inadequate storage and space.

The Museo Villa Roy, which has been closed for a seismic retrofit since 2010, is a SCAD-owned museum in Tegucigalpa.  The government has yet to allocate any of the 13 million lempiras needed to do the work, so the building, a former President's home, remains both closed and at risk of collapsing.

The National Library needs significant infrastructure work and pest removal in order to remain open to the public.

It's not just the central government that's abdicating its responsibilities, either. The situation of cultural institutions in San Pedro Sula is also declining, due to defaults by the city government.

Both privately-run museums in San Pedro Sula, the Museo de Antropología e Historia and the Museo de la Naturaleza, have been operating without budgetary support promised by the San Pedro Sula City government, support that should make up about half of each of their budgets.  Both museums may close later this year. 

Marvin Fajardo, director of the Children's Museum in San Pedro said that the government was not interested in supporting these institutions and pointed to the closing of the National Arts School in Tegucigalpa as proof.

The City of San Pedro also backed out of its agreement to fund a visitor's center and the maintenance of the archaeological site of Currusté, effectively closing the site to what had been expected to be visitation by thousands of school kids every year.

So what is the budget of the Secretaria de Cultura Artes y Deportes being spent on, aside from salaries? 

If one views the posts on its Facebook page, one would be forced to conclude the mission of SCAD is to teach chess and host street-fairs featuring performances, sales, and sports in Tegucigalpa. 

This must be what the Minister thinks "resonates" with the Honduran people.

Culture is not a priority under the government of Lobo Sosa and his Minister Tulio Mariano Gonzalez. 

It's more like what Miguel Diaz, a businessman, said:

Here in Honduras, neither art nor culture have value and are not taken into account.

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.