translated from Spanish: INAH to perform substantive tasks despite 700 mdp cut, says director

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) will meet the 75% cut in its operating and general services expenditure ordered by the Ministry of Finance that will involve operating without 700 million pesos for this year. But, according to its director, Diego Prieto, none of the institution’s substantive activities will be affected.
To address the economic and health crisis arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government will reduce spending on operational and general services in the public administration, which involve concepts such as gasolines, leases or office supplies, but in the case of INAH these are essential expenses for its operation, employees say.
However, Prieto argues that there will be no decrease in the conservation, research and safeguarding tasks of the Institute and, on the other hand, to abide by the cut is to bring the tradition of solidarity organism afloat. “INAH has risks, but humanity as a whole, the country, and particularly sectors that have gone without income and require social programs to come to aid from their diminished or collapsed economy.”
Read: Cut in AH will affect Palenque, Temple Major, Restoration and Museums
In an interview with Animal Político he says that applying the cut means that “we have to be annutive, so that the Mexican State feels that we are collaborating and participating in this health and social effort”.
For this reason, to officials who have protested this cut, Prieto tells them that society should see the institute as an institution that not only asks for, but contributes. “Let not only be seen as concern for INAH, but about society as a whole. Not only to be concerned about my research project, which will surely be very important, but also concerned about the communities with which I interact.”
The INAH, in charge of 110 thousand historical monuments, 53 thousand archaeological zones, and 162 museums, had a budget of 3 mi 918 million pesos, in addition to 800 million that would obtain for the entrances to enclosures and archaeological areas but which it will also not have because they were closed to the public due to the pandemic.
The cut will leave only 3 billion budget pesos, plus 400 million self-generated pesos once activities resume. And yet, it will require more resources, but Prieto is confident that the Federal government will contribute them when necessary through some budget mechanism because President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “appreciates” INAH.
“I am not the one who can decide whether an exception or a tax measure applies, but what I can assure you, because this is how Secretary Alejandra Frausto has given me security, and I know the appreciation that Mr. President López Obrador has of INAH, is that the INAH will not lack the minimum resources necessary to succeed” Explains.
On Tuesday, Animal Político published the affectations that the Institute would suffer according to employees who operate such important projects as the conservation of archaeological areas such as Palenque or Templo Mayor, also accuse the impossibility of reducing expenses to maintain museums and their acquis.
And while the budget cut is touching the entire public administration, there have been sectors that generated such pressure that they managed to reverse the threat, as happened with the film community by defending the Trust Investment Fund and Film Stimuli, or the trusts of the Conacyt centers, with the intervention of its owner, María Elena Alvarez Buylla.
By asking the director of INAH why he would not fight for more resources for the institute, as workers demand, he assured that this is not his role. “My job is not to fight. The authorities can only execute the acts for which we are empowered by law. Defending THE INAH in some way is a task that is embodied in the Organic Law, but what I do have to take charge of is having the basic recuso to attend to the social commissions imposed on me by the law.”
Nothing substantive will be touched
Diego Prieto explained that the cut will be governed by three principles: There will be no layoffs throughout the Institute; rights will not be affected and, therefore, all benefits are guaranteed and no substantive investigation, conservation and dissemination operation will be suspended.
There will be sufficient resources to maintain non-deferred activities such as the conservation of archaeological areas, research or maintenance of museums. While there may not be ambitious excavation projects, which the new normal also does not allow either, there will be for the basics. “The indispensable resources are assured because there is the political will”, Ensures.
Expenses that will definitely be suspended during the year are trips abroad, congresses, presentations “with their respective toast”, travel or transport.
However, the cut will maintain one of the problems that the Institute has dragged in the last 20 years in terms of work, because due to the cuts in places a part of the recruitment of staff was made through Chapter 3000, one of those affected by the cut.
That is why archaeologists, historians, museographers, surveyors and restaurateurs, among other professionals, were hired for fees, without any needing social security or certainty of work, since their contracts are only for project. Years of work without generating antiquity, hoping to get a place.
The current administration began with the regularization of this staff, which until the first semester achieved the incorporation of 250 employees, but due to the cut, the review of the cases of 700 employees serving for fees was pending.
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Original source in Spanish