2023-07-23 08:26:19
22/07/2023
The secretary of Citizen Culture of Medellín, the playwright Álvaro Narváez, is a controversial character within an already controversial cabinet. Many artists and cultural managers in the city received with hope —or, at least, with expectation— his appointment as head of the Mayor’s office for being a professional artist who knows well the struggles of cultural managers to carry out cultural projects, despite the slow times of the bureaucracy.
However, it was soon shown that things were going to be very different. In a short time, cultural sectors of weight and tradition broke blankets with the official and became his greatest critics.
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And it is still symptomatic that it was the theater people who first set off the alarms for Narváez’s work. Or at least the theater members of the Medellín collective on stage, which counts among its members the groups Matacandelas, Oficina Central de los Sueños and Teatro Popular de Medellín. At that time, the experts read the break between Narváez and directors of the dimension of Cristóbal Peláez, Iván Zapata and Jaiver Jurado as one more chapter between the differences that divide the city theater into two camps. On one side would be those of Medellín en Escena and on the other, those of the Ateneo Porfirio Barba Jacob, which for many was the creative cradle of today’s secretary of citizen culture. However, the protests from other sectors —that of the cinema, that of street artists, that of dance and that of the great museums— demonstrated that the criticism of Narváez is not the result of rancor from the past.
The matter goes further. And it has to do with the mood that Mayor Daniel Quintero has spread to his subordinates. In the case of Narváez, this attitude has translated —in the words of several cultural managers— into the disqualification of his adversaries (in a Facebook comment he called them “Neardentals of culture”) or in the renaming of projects with a long history, which end up being undermined due to the delay in their execution (this happened with Public Training, which in this administration was renamed Dynamic Publics and which kept the great museums and theaters of the capital of Antioquia in limbo, among them the Museum of Antioquia or the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín). Narváez, according to sources consulted, has also tried to politicize the response to the objections to his poor management: he has blamed the opposition councilors for the fact that there is no money for scholarships or calls for incentives.
Another strong challenge to his management is to confuse the public with the figures. At least that’s what a source points out, indicating that, for example, in the conversations regarding budgets for the audiovisual area, the money invested in the operation of Telemedellín has been brought to light. And this cannot be so because some things are pears (creation grants for local directors and screenwriters) and other very different apples (funds for an official channel). This has led filmmakers to be the protagonists of the protests, as theater directors did before and then librarians.
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No one doubts Álvaro Narváez’s ability to stage events. For example, he has made the Miradas Festival one of the emblems of his management. International and Colombian films have been screened there in different parts of the city. However, the culture union considers that Miradas is precisely the demonstration of Narváez’s intentions. A cultural manager, who requested that his name be reserved, affirmed that said festival lays bare the cultural project of Daniel Quintero’s mayor’s office. “At first one does not understand why there is no money for audiovisual creation scholarships or to support traditional festivals, but there is to finance Miradas. Then, at the inaugurations, one sees the prominence given to Diana Osorio, the mayor’s wife, in the protocol and that’s where he understands the thing.”
The aesthetic and ideological diversity of Narváez’s critics distorts the official narrative that the opponents of the mayor’s office are the leaders and spokespersons for Uribism or Fiquismo. Many of those who today give a bad note to the cultural work of the government of Daniel Quintero voted at the time for whoever rules the Alpujarra today. EL COLOMBIANO wanted to remove the examination of the management of the Ministry of Culture from the political trenches. That is why he consulted managers and artists from different fields and backgrounds regarding the results of these four years: the verdict is not encouraging for a city that made culture and art a tool once morest violence.
These are the opinions of these five cultural managers of the city
“Lethargy and the incipient were the words of this administration”
María Patricia Marín Arango – Director of the Medellín Cultural Association Metropolitan Theater
“The management had two moments and it is fair to highlight it: the time of the pandemic and the post-pandemic. At the time of the pandemic, whoever was there as the Secretary of Citizen Culture did their best to throw all possible life preservers at cultural institutions, understanding that if this was not the case, then many of us were going to disappear because we are self-sustaining institutions. However, when the pandemic passes we live in a time of lethargy. We feel a lethargy: the projects came out late.
That was the case of Public Training, which we have just signed. That is, it came out almost six months following the start of the year. We would have wanted to benefit strata 1, 2 and 3 with our programming, to which we have already become accustomed and with whom we have been working for a long time, not only since this administration. In this wasted time, many audiences want to come, but feel the frustration of not being able to access the theater, because finally we are not capable of subsidizing the ticket office on this specific project.
The basis of all this occurs when a government decreases its culture category. When that happens it shows that we are in trouble. In post-pandemic times, culture is one of the items that should be higher, along with health and education. If our secretariats of culture are not capable of not only conserving but also increasing culture budgets, then our cities are not going to be progressive, even if we boast that we are the city of music, of art. That is not demonstrated with massive concerts but by pointing out what was the resource that was invested in the culture and art of the city”.
“In dance we lost all four years because there was no serious matter in creation”
Catalina Piedrahita Múnera – Dancer and cultural manager
“On the subject of dance, the creation grants were passed only from participatory budgets. Creation scholarships that in the stimuli in previous administrations were 30 million pesos, in 2023 they have not even come out. And if they came out in participatory budgets they reach budgets of 10 or 15 million pesos. So, I think that on the creation side, we lost the year. We lost the four years of government because there was no serious matter of creation. Dance –and this has been a long tradition– is assumed as something with which they fill the programming of the cultural agenda, many times in an equitable way, through calls, many of them also from freelance contracts, but dance was seen as a specific item on an agenda.
Many things remained unanswered, but we have hope in the municipal dance agreement, which is the result of the work of the municipal dance councilors and which must be presented to the Medellín Council by July 31. If it is not delivered by this date, we would have to start over. Hopefully the matter turns out well because dance needs an agreement that strengthens the events and the training processes.
Beyond convincing the mayor Daniel Quintero and the other cabinet secretaries, the secretary Álvaro Narváez became their errand boy, doing what they asked. And he also failed to work in coordination with cultural organizations. Without the organizations and without the artists and cultural managers there would be no Ministry of Culture”.
“We had a Secretary of Culture who helped the owners of the stages more than the artists”
Iván Zapata Ríos – Director of the Popular Theater of Medellín
“The balance of these four years of cultural management of the Medellín mayor’s office is quite negative and deplorable for the artistic sector of the city. We spent four years having a Secretary of Culture who was Secretary of Culture of a certain sector, but not one of the city. This secretary had many setbacks, those of us who disagree with his ideas were treated as Neanderthals.
This administration meant a very big delay. I find that very sad, very depressing. I think the artistic and cultural sector should be restructured and almost start from scratch once more. If you ask me for a rating of this secretariat – and the standard is from 1 to 5 – I think it doesn’t even reach 2. We had a Secretary of Culture who helped the owners of the stages, the sound equipment more than the artists themselves. During this period, artistic and cultural processes were not proposed, but we had a secretary who was more aware of social networks, of how many likes it can have and of doing a thousand concerts and stage events without thinking regarding the creators and artistic products for a true process of public formation.
We can define these four years of cultural management of the Medellín mayor’s office with the slogan of the Performing Arts Festival a few years ago: in nothingness, emptiness and absence”.
“The secretary of culture was simply an event manager”
Ana Katalina Carmona – Screenwriter and audiovisual producer
“I think this has been a terrible management. And I say terrible with all the dramatic that word can be. This has been an effort that has taken us back in time, it has brought us back to thinking that culture is an association of events. For example, the secretary prioritized doing the Miradas Festival, which is not even in the development plan. He prioritized holding that event and not supporting artists through creation scholarships. This demonstrates a total disconnection with reality, with what the artists, filmmakers, and writers of this city need.
For us it is a total disappointment to see how Álvaro Narváez, who is supposedly from the artists’ union, was simply an event manager, but he has no idea how to strategically promote culture.
We have tried everything. In 2021 they made a terrible mistake and it was not getting any free creation scholarship for the filmmakers of this city or for the audiovisual sector. They only got scholarships that commissioned some videos, but they were not focused on the artistic side of the audiovisual sector. Since then, we have tried many dialogues. A month ago we sat down, following the protest we did in the center, to talk with them. But one gets frustrated in those dialogues. There is a lot of impudence in those dialogues, because Álvaro Narváez has dared to lie, he has dared to inflate figures. At the last meeting, all he did was accuse the councilors that they did not want to vote for the EPM budget surplus that Daniel Quintero was asking for.
The administration has mismanaged resources and therefore, at this time, does not have the money to run essential programs. The meetings have really been a great challenge, even for political culture, because we have to prepare ourselves, because there is no way to have a frank dialogue or any level of honesty with the current administration”.
“Improvisation and superficiality were constants in this administration”
Germán Carvajal – Troubadour and cultural manager
“This has been quite deficient, improvised, superficial management. The Ministry of Culture has not been a support for cultural managers, for cultural organizations that have contributed so much to the city since the 1980s. Cultural policy disappeared, there is no direction in Medellín’s cultural policy, there was no plan for the future, we did not know it. Nor have they given us the ten-year culture plan, which is a debt that the administration owes to art in Medellín.
It has left tremendous sadness within the cultural union that Álvaro Narváez, someone from the sector, has been the leader of the worst cultural management in Medellín. For example, the Medellín City National Trova Festival lost importance and prominence in the Flower Fair. That has been declining during these four years and it is evident that the events no longer attract the public that they did here.
The trova has a gigantic virtue and it is to say what people are thinking in the street and that is a fear of this Administration, that the troubadours on stage say precisely what people are thinking on the corners. In the event they force the troubadours to get involved in issues in which this mayor’s office looks good, in which the names of the mayor and the secretary of culture look good. So, this politicization of the discourse and the contents of the trova, in addition to the impoverishment of the trova’s budgets, are a worrying thing.
Improvisation and superficiality were constants in this administration. She bet on events like RBD concerts, things that generate photos and videos on social media, but don’t leave a message for the city regarding how to be better citizens.”
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