Cultural management and policy in Latin America: A major contribution for English-speaking practitioners and researchers

The relationship between Latin America and other regions of the world in the field of cultural management has been developing for several decades in different dimensions (artistic, political, diplomatic, educational, economic, scientific, etc.). At the same time, asymmetries in power relations have been defining the direction of exchange flows in the different spheres in which each dimension operates. Despite the efforts of the international community and organisations such as UNESCO to protect and strengthen the diversity of cultural expressions, at least for the moment, these exchanges are led by the countries of the "developed North", which dominate and impose the conditions under which these exchanges take place. In particular, looking at the circulation of scientific knowledge - in all fields, not only in cultural management - the widespread predominance of scientific publications in English has turned English into a sort of "single language of diversity". 

 

In this context, I would like to comment on the book "Cultural Management and Policy in Latin America”, edited by Raphaela Henze and Federico Escribal and published by Routledge 2021. It is an original work in English but, contrary to the mainstream, what we find in it is a sample of the richness of Latin American academic production. Through this work, English-speaking managers and researchers will be able to learn not only about different aspects of the situation of cultural management in nine Latin American countries that speak Spanish and Portuguese, but also about the development of its epistemology in the region.

 

 

These topics are approached from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. Taking into account the particular political moment the region is going through; the book does not avoid the effects that the policies applied have had -and continue to have- on the cultural sector and its management. It deals with the impact of the recent wave of neo-liberalism, but also recovers the consequences of the long colonial period which, unfortunately, still persist in some aspects studied. It also notes the exceptional health situation produced by the Covid-19 pandemic and its initial impact on the arts and culture sector.

 

As the editors point out, cultural management is not neutral. This position leads them to question not only the geographical definition of the region, but also cultural management in itself, seen by some authors as an externally imposed concept. Hence, they advocate for their own models, which emerge as a result of concrete practices in specific contexts, since, as they point out, "there is no single model, but rather common concerns". 

These models, as Ponte points out from the outset, cannot be identified on the basis of an assumption of absolute insularity, which would distort the growing and rich interconnectedness of a continent particularly influenced by foreign models, in which it still seeks to recognise itself.  This vision corresponds to the recognition of the enormous diversity and cultural heterogeneity of Latin America, a perception that runs, in one way or another, through the articles of the different authors that make up the book.

 

In this context, the book describes is a professional field that is maturing its own hypotheses at the regional level. That is, integrating what suits it best from global models, and excluding what does not fully account for the challenges that history and territory present to it at present. Those issues are discussed in the first block, from a more generalist perspective. It includes a detailed account of the main vicissitudes of the profession in Mesoamerica, a region with its own particularities, provided by Mario Mejía.

 

Cultural policies reflect internal political tensions and become a field in which multiple social sectors seek to maintain or challenge a given status quo. This is particularly visible in De la Vega's contribution, in which she identifies how Ecuador's cultural elites captured national cultural institutions, as well as in Britto's chapter on Bolivia, in which she makes visible the historical indigenous dispute for full recognition as participants in national cultural life, without which it is difficult to understand Evo Morales' rise to power.

 

The book combines theoretical perspectives (or essays) on cultural management in the region, with concrete references to the reality of nine countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. The first part addresses, among other issues, the relationship between culture and politics, the social function of the arts, the connection between cultural management and social movements, and the question of cultural citizenship. The theoretical frameworks underpinning the authors' contributions are also discussed. A suggestive and original point in this part is, in my opinion, the comparison between Latin America and Oceania (Araújo and Leitāo), which opens up new perspectives for understanding arts and culture policies and, consequently, also on how to manage them. Their proposal, which seeks to understand regional blocs from their evident and potential interconnectedness, rather than from historically consolidated differences, is a concrete contribution to the quest to translate decolonial theory into concrete applications. The authors' effort to find commonalities that allow for the feedback of experiences deserves to be highlighted.

 

In the second part, each author contributes his or her specific vision on a specific topic from his or her profession and discipline, resulting in a broad perspective, composing a coherent mosaic where issues such as identity, the market, cultural rights, diversity, the differential characteristics of public and private management, as well as the place of each of these topics in training programmes and spaces, are dealt with.

 

A thorough reading will allow the reader to perceive those distinctive features that situate each country in a distinctive place in the Latin American cultural ecosystem. The Argentina that once stood as a cultural beacon for the region, with film and publishing as ambassadors, at its current crossroads. The way in which the Paraguayan cultural field begins to be influenced by an unprecedented multiplicity of social actors, breaking a historical restriction, in a movement finely described by Zamorano. The efforts - and contradictions - of the process of professionalisation of cultural managers in Chile, together with the challenges it sets for the current process of transformations. The power disputes that underpin the Ecuadorian cultural field, in the aforementioned article by Paola de la Vega, who problematises an unreflective importation of cultural management as a professional category. Cultural management's difficulties in establishing itself as a valid discipline on the cultural chessboard in Brazil, a country "with a long past ahead of it" as Suelen Silva points out. Urbanavicius and Moizo identify, in their article on Uruguay, ways in which a historical French cultural influence on the region's elites finds its way into cultural management, when the latter seeks to orient itself towards the dissemination of legitimised heritages. In this sense, the article complements Escribal's and De la Vega's in articulating a regional critique of the European narrative that introduced the discipline to the region. The relevance of the Mexican case, not only because of its national scale but also because of the extent to which cultural management has developed, is analysed by Hernández Farfán and Peregrina Leiva through an exhaustive review of its multiple dimensions. This includes an unavoidable reference to the exercise of cultural rights in contexts of political violence. To conclude, Carpio focuses her work on the trajectory of Peru's Ministry of Culture, as the main dynamiser of cultural management processes in the country. The distinctive evolution of the institution, a decade from its creation, is tackled by highlighting its debts, but not least by imagining political approaches to overcoming them.

 

Beyond these singularities, all chapters describe the way in which cultural managers are trained, identify the challenges for research in the field, as well as the main limits for contemporary practice.

 

 

In short, the book provides a valuable contribution, not only because of its limited precedents, but mainly because of its international cooperation effort, which contributes to the mutual knowledge of cultural managers and researchers from all over the world.