Months before Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected in the 2018 presidential elections, the person in charge of his culture project, Alejandra Frausto, promised an ambitious decentralization project in the sector.
Six years later, Frausto leaves the Ministry of Culture (SC) without fully fulfilling what, he assured, would be the core commitment of his Administration: a network of community groups that would cover each municipality in the Country.
This was promised in an interview with this newspaper, published in April 2018, and in the public meeting he held, a month later, with the culture representatives of the other campaigns, organized by the Reflection Group on Economy and Culture (Grecu ). At that time, Frausto was already carrying the questioned results of the Mexico Culture for Harmony program, a similar project that she herself operated, from the then General Directorate of Popular Cultures, during the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term.
Now, as head of the entire sector, the official established the Community Culture Program, which was responsible for founding, according to official figures, a total of 442 Creative Seedbeds throughout the territory.
Beyond the fact that this number is much lower than the 2,446 municipalities at the national level, the public policy of decentralization of the SC, the axis of its discourse, had shortcomings and non-compliance on several fronts. Added to this is the failed move of the SC to Tlaxcala, which was left half done.
Culture for the capital
Except for the promise of opening the former Official Residence of Los Pinos to the public, the priority megaproject Chapultepec, Nature and Culture never figured in the culture project.
This is a commitment for the enjoyment of the capital that consumed, for three consecutive years, a quarter of the budget of the federal Ministry of Culture, to reach the official figure of 10,500 million pesos. However, according to a budget monitoring by the Fundar Analysis and Research Center, the cost would be more like 13,346 million pesos, exercised through a program called Social Infrastructure Project of the Cultural Sector. Last Tuesday, during the inauguration of the Fourth Section of Chapultepec, the President-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, reported that the megaproject arose already at the beginning of the six-year term, as a response to an attempt to privatize that area of the forest. As Head of Government of Mexico City, Sheinbaum worked with the federal Ministry of Culture so that 9,810 million 964 thousand pesos of the latter’s budget, as recorded in public agreements, were transferred directly to two local agencies: the Ministry of Works and Services (Sobse) and the local Environment Secretariat (Sedema). With this amount, plus the resources provided directly by the SC, the four sections of the forest were ecologically rehabilitated, new infrastructure was created using existing buildings and the existing one was rehabilitated. This, however, led to the neglect of other areas that specifically concern decentralization efforts.
Less money to the states
Chapultepec, Nature and Culture has not only been criticized for its cost for a capital development, where the greatest infrastructure and cultural offering is concentrated, but for the state and municipal projects that were no longer attended to in its place.
Questioned about the cost of the megaproject and its centralist nature, Alejandra Frausto responded to this newspaper that the origin of the resources spent justifies its use. “The resource with which Chapultepec is made is not a centralized resource, it is a resource that I invite you to investigate what went into it, the money from those labeled during that time, more than 27 billion pesos that we will hardly know in the projects they went on,” he said on a tour of the Fourth Section in June. “It is the resource that was previously allocated to that, which in many cases ended in cases of corruption,” he added. With the term “labeled”, Frausto referred to a controversial pool of resources from the cultural sector, effectively highlighted by cases of corruption, that the Chamber of Deputies used to grant with discretion to cultural projects. Since 2009, REFORMA documented numerous cases where legislators granted million-dollar resources to projects close to their economic or family interests, or through the collection of “moches.” In addition to notorious cases, such as that of the Esperanza Azteca orchestra network, or associations linked to the PRI Gerardo Sánchez, former leader of the National Peasant Confederation (CNC), the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) pointed out in 2015 and 2017 the opacity and discretion of this practice. However, when this item was eradicated in 2019 due to cases of corruption, hundreds of projects of proven solidity, with municipal, state and federal scope, primarily from civil associations, lost the possibility of obtaining resources in this way. Contrary to what was declared by the head of the SC, each support granted is fully traceable to the association that exercised it and, as can be seen in the Expenditure Budget, corresponds to projects to promote reading, artistic caravans, support for infrastructure , educational initiatives and festivals created by citizens. In his response, Frausto also did not mention that, before Chapultepec, Naturaleza y Cultura was announced, his solution for the use of these resources was to place them in one of the Ministry’s budget programs, Support for Culture. That 2019, the 578 million pesos of that bag were redirected towards the programs that receive resources through that budget item: the Program to Support Municipal and Community Cultures (Pacmyc), the Support Program for Cultural and Artistic Festivals (Profest ) and that of Mexican World Heritage Cities (CMPM). Also to the Community Support Fund for the Reconstruction of Monuments and Artistic Assets of Federal Property (Foremoba) and the Support Fund for State Cultural Institutions (Aiec). With the arrival of Chapultepec, that stock market headed to the capital and the rest of its resources, truly national in scope, decreased. “What happened in this six-year term was notorious, a very important part was centralized, because each year 25 percent of the budget was directed to the Chapultepec Complex, neglecting the other budget programs,” says Paulina Castaño, Fundar analyst. In his study “Culture and Public Budget. Inequality and centralization of cultural infrastructure”, as well as in his annual monitoring of the sector’s budget, Castaño documented that Apoyos a la Cultura only spent 1,715 million pesos during the Sexennium. This amount, much lower than Chapultepec’s 10,500 million pesos, was also decreasing each year, from 673 million exercised in 2019 to 192 million exercised in 2023. “One of the most affected was the Support program to Culture, which has various aspects, which are also programs, and which serves federal entities, then they practically ran out of resources because the majority of the budget went to the construction of Chapultepec,” he explains. In the Fundar study, the specialist points out that one of the most beneficial programs for the states, Support for the Cultural Infrastructure of the States (Paice), in 2021 only benefited 11 entities with a total amount of 24 million weights. In 2022, only 14 entities received a total of 25 million pesos. Other programs within Support for Culture, such as Profest, have been positively evaluated for their impact on decentralization and access to culture, as indicated in a study this year carried out by Coneval. Right there, however, it is notable that the amount allocated to sponsoring festivals throughout the country, in this area, went from 103 million pesos in 2019 to only 28 million in 2022. Budgetarily speaking, Chapultepec took what corresponded to the states.
Community Culture: a black box
The President-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, has already publicly announced that her cultural project, now under the leadership of Claudia Curiel de Icaza, will decisively continue with the Community Culture program.
This, however, has been carried out in notorious budgetary opacity. “The program information is a black box. At least, in terms of budget, there is nothing, there is only information from 2019 and 2020,” says Paulina Castaño. The specialist in budget analysis of the sector is already preparing a new study for this year, which details how, after an evaluation that Coneval made of the program, it disappeared from the structure and was merged with another, so it is impossible to know how much money was allocated to him. After numerous public requests for information, both to the SC and the Treasury, the amount has not been revealed. “They do not say how many resources they are giving to the program, how it maintains the infrastructure throughout the country and if there are really resources to maintain the infrastructure where the classes are held in the Creative Seedbeds, or how much they are paying the workshop participants,” he criticized. Chestnut. An infrastructure, less than that promised by Frausto in 2018, which will now be the incoming Government’s turn to operate.
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