The Viña del Mar Festival has taken a position on the controversy opened by the presence of the Mexican Featherweight for the closing of the event, next March 1. He has done so by confirming that the poster continues, and praising the singer's career and responding to the discussion with a statement in which he assures that he will not incur any type of censorship or discrimination: “Peso Pluma has more than 55.5 million listeners monthly and is the revelation artist of 2023 in the latest and most prestigious international awards (…) Prominent TV networks in the US, Europe and all of America have given space to his talent,” they write in a statement. The discussion has also escalated in the bill presented by a Democratic Party representative, aimed at prohibiting the participation of artists who promote drug trafficking and other criminal activities in massive events financed with public resources.
The Festival's statement, published this Thursday evening in response to the controversy unleashed after the publication of an opinion column by sociologist Alberto Mayol, has settled such discussion by appealing to inclusion: “The largest Latin festival in the world celebrates the diversity of all the artists who set foot on this outstanding stage. Music is universal and describes different realities,” they clarify. Meanwhile, in the Chilean Congress, representative Joanna Pérez—from the center-right party—presented an initiative to prohibit this type of “apologies” for criminal activities from taking place in public spaces and with State resources.
They have not been the only public expressions that have fueled the fire of controversy. This same Thursday, a high-profile member of the Government of Gabriel Boric, the country's Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, said that the matter concerned them and that the issue went beyond the Festival. “It should be a topic of concern and debate in Chilean society, so that we are aware of what we are hearing as well. If you hear that there is awareness of the message that exists and it does not promote those types of values or those types of views of society.”
A statement from the television station TVN—a state channel that is part of the organization and broadcast of the Festival—has distanced itself from what was said by the president of its board of directors, Francisco Vidal, who had declared just this Thursday that he was in talks with the executive director, Alfredo Ramírez, “to carefully examine the presence of the Mexican singer.” In its official positioning, TVN says: “The definition of the participants of the Viña del Mar International Song Festival is the responsibility of a commission made up of the Municipality of Viña del Mar, Channel 13 and TVN. “The National Television Directorate of Chile has no influence in the selection of the artists who are part of the musical event's lineup.”
Alberto Mayol, author of the column that lit the chain of reactions, said in an interview with EL PAÍS that if his text has had the impact it did, it is because of the current scenario that Chile is experiencing, with a serious security crisis and an increase in violent crimes such as homicides by firearm. fire. “If this matter escalated as it did, it is not because the column is extraordinary, nor because the amount of public that regularly reads me is gigantic, it was because it precisely touched the sensitive fibers. It awakened the feeling that at least we have to discuss this problem seriously at the political level and not remain inactive,” he says.
Regarding the positions that some of those involved have made—TVN's statements, that of the Festival itself, and the absence of a response from the municipality of Viña del Mar—the sociologist assures that in reality no one is taking responsibility for giving reasonable responses to society: “In the statement made by the festival organization and in which all the associated companies appear, which are not the organizers, no one speaks out, no one explains, no one faces the press and no one takes charge. This Government collation was the one that told us that money was not everything. I was there, we raised it systematically. Politics is in such confusion in the face of this type of phenomenon that it ends up confirming it. [a Peso Pluma] also without anyone taking responsibility,” he says.
The dangerous line of censorship
For Mayol, the issue is not about censorship, something he says he is against, but “something simpler”: “The Chilean State spends millions and millions of dollars every day trying to control, usually without success, the drug trafficking. If the State itself provides public resources to promote drug culture, then isn't it doing exactly the opposite of what its mandate is? That is the absurdity,” he says.
Javiera Tapia is a Chilean journalist specializing in music and feminism in the media. She is the author of one of the columns that have emerged from various places in Chile to delve deeper and respond to Mayol's opinions. In a text published this Thursday titled The rejection of the presence of Featherweight in Viña del Mar: the symbolic and the earthlyin the online music magazine POTQ, The journalist brings to the table, among other nuances, the fact that “what matters is what is visible,” and that the discussion does not focus on the way in which narco culture in Chile, fueled by great social inequalities, conflicts local, and also fed under the custody of the media, has been slowly seeping into daily life for several years now.
“There is something that Alberto Mayol overlooks in his column and that, in fact, is a topic that seems much more productive and interesting to me; the ownership and organization of the Viña Festival. He wonders why the participation of an artist who has ties to narco culture should be financed with public money. And he questions TVN and the municipality of Viña del Mar. But there is a very important element that escapes him in the equation and that changes everything. In summary, the Festival works like this: the municipality of Viña puts out to tender the transmission and organization, which this year is again carried out by Channel
13 and TVN. But all the production and artistic realization is in charge of a private company: Bizarro, with Alfredo Alonso and Daniel Merino at the helm. It strikes me that in this entire debate no one pointed that out,” says Tapia in his text.
Alberto Mayol assures that this is a case that shows all the mistakes that political systems can make and assures: “I don't think it should be censored, I don't believe that Peso Pluma can't go to Chile and sing, what I'm saying is that “You cannot sing at public events with public funds because the State is promoting something that it is trying to combat.”
The sociologist concludes by telling the anecdote of how a Chilean congressman told him the reactions that reading his column provoked in him, and the surprise he experienced when he asked his ten-year-old son if he knew the Mexican singer: “When he asked him what that he did Peso Pluma, the boy responded that 'he sings Mexican corridos and that he works for the Sinaloa Cartel.' That child is assuming that as something normal. “If we are going to pretend that nothing happened, that cannot be,” he concludes.
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