The COVID-19 crisis has hit the cultural productive sectors hard, bringing consequences for millions of families and households, with an uncertain future on the horizon. In these three months, various leaders, representatives and spokesers of trade unions, networks, guilds and federations of the cultural sector have sat for hours and hours before their computers, in working tables convened by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage (Mincap), in the hope of finding solutions. But unfortunately today they find themselves with exactly the same answers from authority as at the beginning of April. Meanwhile, workers are going through a serious labor crisis and their spaces risk the final closure.
Therefore, this Friday, June 26, the new Intersectoral Coordinator Culture in Emergency, composed of 19 organizations representing the cultural diversity of artistic disciplines presented their own Emergency and Reactivation Plan to the Ministry.
“The proposal involves an inter-ministerial plan that requires political will and recognition of a sector that, in addition to contributing to the development of the country, with employment and remuneration to GDP, builds identity, generates community and contributes to health during the pandemic,” says Tehani Staiger, president of ADCultura. They also propose to continue this plan with other guilds and sectors that want to join effective work for the survival of cultures.
Urgent changes
The reactivation plan consists of measures at all levels, from MINCAP to municipalities, including: Immediately ending budget cuts to culture; Create a real interministerial linkage that allows resources to be injected for the implementation of hygiene and safety protocols; re-linking campaign with public spaces and ensure the purchase of content and programming for cultural spaces.
As for workers, they call for a characterization study and that their results be binding on a change and recognition in their labour regime. It is in turn necessary to reduce gender and territory gaps, so that this plan has local relevance and inclusion in all its contents, they point out.
They not only demand urgent changes but also other structural ones. The Coordinator warns that this pandemic has uncovered deeper problems, such as the subsidiary model that obliges the current constitution as well as the zero value that the Government gives to the cultural sector. MINCAP has one of the lowest budgets nationally and according to its undersecretary, Juan Carlos Silva, does not have the legal powers to deliver direct bonds of support to workers. From the Chamber of Deputies he has been urged to create a transitional article so that there is such a possibility.
Representatives of culture warn of this danger: “It should be protecting itself, injecting more resources and strengthening regional programmes above all. It is imperative that cultures and the arts be at the heart of the response to this crisis from the State. We need an injection of resources to lift the artists, spaces and workers of culture, and immediately stop the ongoing budget cuts, so that we can implement this much-needed plan correctly,” says María Fernanda García of Unión Nacional de Artistas.
Competing for resources
According to the Catastro prepared by the same Ministry of Cultures The Arts and Heritage, 85% of participants declare that they are a freelancer or that 66% their income depends on their cultural work. “They force us to rely on nefarious contests to which most of us cannot apply for their very demands. They recognize that we are not on the “radar” by allocating an anthojax quota of the sector, making it easier to have radicalized our job precariousness. We have become vulnerable because we are not ‘good of necessity’; unaware of the importance of cultures, arts and heritage in containment, sustainment and recovery not only of this pandemic but at the level of the country’s daily history,” says Isabel Bravo, spokeser at Musixcs of Chile.
Add to these words Daniela Espinoza, President of the SinTECI Film and Audiovisual Workers Union. “The cultural content that Chileans are consuming today is the work of peoplepandemic and paralysis. We need a clear policy of revival in the short to medium term that addresses the sector’s brutal cessation, gender-based and regional perspectives. To cut in culture is to take away the livelihood of thousands of Chilean families who depend on it and also thousands of Chileans who enjoy these works, either online or in person when we return to the halls. Cutting into culture is criminal,” he says.
The reopening of cultural spaces
Without even delivering emergency solutions, the authorities have already begun to talk about reopening. “It is difficult to talk about the return, when that will be with the debt burden on the back and a scenario that will only allow to work with a reduced capacity, but that will be essential in the process of returning to the social and cultural life of the communities”, emphasizes Veronica Tapia, of Network of Theater Rooms.
From the Coordinator they admit that not only the MINCAP but also the Ministry of Finance must take an active role in this. “There is a historic debt that is now urgent to settle. That the Council of Culture became a Ministry was a triumph that we all celebrate for the well-being of all Chilean society. To date, even the budgetary resources necessary to constitute themselves as such have not been provided. We believe that not only within MINCAP but also Minister Ignacio Briones within the Economic Agreement signed a few days ago must include culture,” they conclude.
