The volume brings together several voices of the culture administrators and experts
The culture in Mexico has been approached from very different approaches, mostly from creation. However one of the unexplored issues, whether due ignorance, or perhaps because there has not been sufficient time for analysis, is the cultural economy and its relationship with the State policies, mainly cultural policies.
Carlos Lara González and Eduardo Cruz Vázquez thought that this lack of analysis is worrisome especially taking into account the absence of related bibliography. Because of this, in 2009 the experts in economics and cultural policies created an experts group on Economy and Culture at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco Since then, many projects books and forums have been possible.
One plus was the development of a collective work to review what has happened in the field of culture since the creation of the National Council for Culture and the Arts (Conaculta). This process resulted in the book called 1988-2012. Culture and Transition, coordinated by Cruz Vázquez and González, co-edited by the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) and the Institute of Culture of Morelos, with articles from six collaborators.
The result is an analysis of the decisions taken in the last years of the PRI and the first 12 years of PAN. In total, four presidential administrations, two political parties, and an institution that would become the backbone of Mexico's cultural policies. For the research the coordinators included the voice of the actors who were central to the future of the institution, its presidents: Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, Sari Bermúdez, Sergio Vela and Consuelo Sáizar (Victor Flores Olea, first to chair the Conaculta, declined to participate). Other people also participated such as one of the presidents, Vicente Fox, anthropologist Bolfy Cottom, a specialist in cultural legislation, and others that have been part of the cultural sector, such as Saul Juárez, María Teresa Uriarte and Gerardo Estrada.
"The analysis of cultural policy has been pending for a long time, although it is true that now there are many more people to do that. This was because culture was considered a topic of intellectuals, whether a good or bad performance the government asked the opinion of the intellectuals and was very focused on creating policies for them. Now the field is more open, and we do not need to please one intellectual or another and we are living the are a number of policy actions that failed to land (during the PAN administration), but at least the field opened a bit more "explains Carlos Lara, expert in communication.
This academic book covers topics like "Cultural policy in Mexico", "Economy and cultural sector", "Intellectuals and power in Mexico," "institutional apparatus and sectoral structure", "Mexico's cultural diplomacy" and "The accounts of the Legislature. "
On the cultural economy, Cruz Vázquez, cultural manager and cultural diplomatic at the embassies of Mexico in Chile and Colombia, says that in 1988, when Carlos Salinas de Gortari came to power, the view of the state prevailed, although there were already some private initiatives, but it wasn’t until 2000 when the real relationship between economy and culture starts to take shape.
"It created a sub-discipline that in other countries was already a common practice as regards the contribution of culture to the economy. Ernesto Piedras did important work at the time, the information system was strengthened by Sari Bermúdez and then many other works that dealt with, starting from statistics, the behaviour of the subsector of the state but it wasn’t until the second of the XXI century that we started to have a the sectoral approach. All this delay took its toll in leading us to understand the role of culture in the economy, "he explains.