Deborah Holtz, spokeswoman for the group of intellectuals, met with advisers to President-elect Enrique Peña
Starting with a list of 10 essential commitments in cultural policy, a group of cultural promoters, writers, researchers, editors and Mexican artists asks the administration of President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, to include culture and the arts within the National Development Plan.
The organizers of this initiative, who before the presidential elections gave a document of the 10 commitments for the design of a new cultural policy to the four presidential candidates, have been able to approach the managerial staff for culture of the Peña Nieto’s transition team. According to the editor Deborah Holtz, spokeswoman for the citizens' movement, so far they have held meetings with Rosario Robles, vice-coordinator of Social Policy, and Maria Cristina Garcia Cepeda, coordinator of Culture, and hope to meet with Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, coordinator for the National Development plan, to discuss the Planning Act, passed in January and that for the first time includes the feasibility of including culture in the various sectors.
This law, says Holtz, is the basis of the approach to consider culture as an engine of economic and social development of the country. "Although it is considered in the Plan, no factual possibilities existed. For the first time it is possible, given that there was an amendment to the Planning Act in January this year, discussing the feasibility of culture in education sector plans, social development, economy, health, tourism, environment, communication , public security and international relations, "said Holtz, who along with anthropologist Lucina Jimenez and lawyer Ricardo Fuentes, head the proposal that has gathered about 700 signatures of various personalities from the cultural and citizens, institutions and civil organizations.
The proposal, released last June, has been signed by, among others, Francisco Toledo, Juan Villoro, Horacio Franco, Fernando Gonzalez Gortázar, Néstor García Canclini, Mario Lavista, Pedro Friedeberg, Gael García Bernal and Alberto Kalach.
In this list of commitments necessary for cultural policy 2012-2018, the movement suggests respecting the cultures and linguistic diversity of Indigenous and native peoples and to assume that culture is also a productive sector, with access to credit, and fiscal stimulus that serve youth groups, businesses and civilian cultural organizations. It also proposes legislative changes and taking steps to include artistic, digital and audiovisual education in the national education system, while strengthening policies to promote and expand the various branches and activities of the sector. It also demands that who leads the main institution in the cultural sector should be able to articulate a public policy of the State and have experience in the cultural sector.
This citizen and nonpartisan movement, says Holtz, was born with the intention of making a radical transformation of culture to benefit the country because, unlike other countries, Mexico has not adopted and integrated culture as the fourth pillar of national development. "We continue to view culture as an agency that organizes art events and only serves this sector. Culture has a nexus with social development, environment, economic development, tourism. For this potential of the culture to exist, for that to be possible, you have to have a platform that achieves culture that satisfies people, with different units, and that's why we talk about the transversality of culture, while there is no one to determine how to do that, in will be lost in good intentions, she says.