Breni Cuenca’s appointment was delayed for a month and it has been one month since she was appointed as Culture Secretary. The Culture Secretariat replaced the National Culture and Arts Council (Concultura). The Technical Consultive Council, adjunct to Concultura, will continue working within the Secretariat. Its new role is currently being devised.
She has a busy agenda that is distributed between going through documents, getting up to date and waiting for the legal approval of the change from “Council” to “Secretariat”. This is why we could get only get hold of her at our third attempt.
She met us at a moment when government offices were on vacation. She met us in her office, on the third floor of the building A-5 of the Government Center, and let us know that she is still “straightening up the house” –and her office–. According to Cuenca, she knows that her administration’s priority will be that of strengthening arts and education, a project that is already under way and that will soon be realized.
How do you feel after one month as Culture Secretary?
I am very happy, in high spirits, with lots of work and very enthusiastic. We have great loads of work because we have to work on two fronts: administrative and financial arrangements (institutional work), and at the same time we have to support projects that have to do with our vision and our work plan, that cannot be stopped even though it is being formulated.
Your election was quite a controversy. ¿How do you consider the election process?
I think it was an intense and complex process and that it was very interesting that there was such an intense and big participation of people in response to the call for applications. It was conflictive and it was foreseeable that, being the cultural milieu, there would be agreements and disagreements.
It has been pointed out that the cultural milieu is a conflictive one…
I do not think that the cultural milieu or community is the most controversial one. I think that, in general, communities and milieus are dynamic… There are times when the cultural milieu reflects critically on its own work and it has been a long time since it does not express as a group, but I do not think we are the most conflictive sector. On the contrary, I think that there is an important possibility of directing the culture sector into a constructive direction.
What were your motivations when taking up your post?
I think that culture is fundamental to achieve social, economic and political transformations in the contemporary world. Culture is being acknowledged more and more as that.
What does “culture” mean to you?
There has been a long debate on the term. It began in the 18th Century, when it was enriched by the anthropological and political debates. I think that this is a never-ending debate; culture is a concept in permanent construction and each country, each nation, makes important contributions to a more complex conclusion on this concept.
Which is the main project you will be working on during the first 100 days?
Not in the first 100 days. There are mid and long term projects, like the creation of a research institute on culture and arts. We have already begun discussions with international partners to figure out how to establish a large group of researchers, funded by grants, on aesthetics, anthropology and archaeology… It is a very important project because it will strengthen our research on historical memory and identity. This project will progress swiftly, I am sure.
This is a project of great importance that requires infrastructure…
I see it more as a virtual project. We, researchers, spend our time in libraries, archives, doing fieldwork, making interviews, etc.
Which projects from the previous administration would you like to continue?
I value the diagnostic studies made. There are statistics and information that resulted from working with focal groups. I think that this is valuable information… We do not have to work only at this diagnostic level, not only proposing policies; instead, we should consult, systematize, and rescue proposals coming from every direction of the cultural and artistic community.
Which will be the central axis of your administration?
We want to strengthen our existing educational institutions. We will aim at creating what we call “the city of the arts”, a city where there should be a music conservatory, an undergraduate dance college, a design college. We must set a good level in these areas. This is our most complex project to create an undergraduate program for every artistic discipline.
There was a project of transforming CENAR into a higher education institute for the arts. Was it suspended?
No. We are currently having discussions with its Director to transform it into a higher education institute that prepares students for undergraduate education. It is not a high school, but the students will be certified as having a basic education, so that they can apply to undergraduate programs.
Will the Institute certify them as “technicians”?
I would not talk about a technician certificate, but as students certified as prepared to pursue an undergraduate program on arts. This responds to a need manifested by the artists; they need to be professionals because otherwise they will not be accepted in graduate programs.
You have said publicly that you are interested in revitalizing the culture houses (casas de la cultura). Do you think they have been underused?
Culture houses are not centres that promote and spread culture; they are merely a territorial presence. The infrastructure exists; there are people who work as their directors or as their administrators, some do it successfully, some do not, but they have not been important cultural promotion and spreading centres. We want to go somewhere else and we are developing a new concept whereby there should be an exchange between the head of arts and the culture houses, which implies a new and strong conceptual engineering of goals, proposals and realities.
Could you please define which would be the concrete benefits of changing from a Council to a Secretariat?
I think that the first benefit is that culture will be more relevant. The President is interested in giving it more importance; this is evident. The country’s culture will come to the forefront and will be a protagonist. This is part of a long path of institutional growth.
Why not a Ministry, as it had been thought at some point?
The idea of becoming a Ministry is part of the government plan. It should be thought as an end point of a maturing process, in which we find ourselves currently. This administration will have to tidy up the house, to give a new direction the long-term guidelines, and to attain important achievements in arts and education, research and artists support.
Your predecessor considered that El Salvador was prepared to have a Ministry of Culture
Currently we are in a formation process, which is a very important phase. In a couple of years we will find out which concrete results we have been able to achieve as a result of being a Secretariat.
How will the artist benefit from this change from Council to Secretariat?
We are deeply concerned about the artists’ condition. It is not acceptable that a choir member earns $114. We should acknowledge artists’ value and contribution to the country. This is a permanent personal worry. We will support artists in their professionalization. We met the Foreign Secretary and Vice-secretary to discuss cultural cooperation matters in order to guarantee a fluid arrival of grants. There is another project that we will launch in three of four months: we will support artists that have not been able to complete an artwork for economic reasons.