Honduran Arts and Artists Suffer in these Difficult Economic times

Honduran Arts and Artists Suffer in these Difficult Economic times

By Wendy Griffin

If US organizations have 501 (c) 3 status from the IRS in the US as non-profits, US people can donate to them and take a deduction on their income taxes. This encourages people and companies who have money in the US to donate to the arts, and other cultural and social service organizations, which is a big reason why these exist in the US. In Honduras, this type of incentive does not exist, and partly for this reason, it is not common for Honduran businesses or well to do individuals to financially support cultural or social service institutions in Honduras.  The recent crisis of the San Pedro Museum of Anthropology and History, run by a private organization, which almost closed due to insufficient funds for operating costs and is still facing financial hard times, is an example of these types of crisis.

The general income level of Honduras, with most people having incomes significantly below the L100,000 a year  income bracket which is required to pay income taxes in Honduras, also affects the fact that little private  or tax based Honduran money is available for the arts and social services sectors.  Newspapers in San Pedro said Honduran parents in San Pedro often reacted negatively to initiatives of the schools to take the students to Museums as they have to pay a small entrance fee.

This confirms my experience in Trujillo. When David Flores has taken Tegucigalpa high school students to Trujillo, they have sometimes refused to get off the bus to go into the Rufino Galan Museum, which he tells them is not be missed as one of the best museums of the history of the North Coast and which they drived 12 hours to see, because they did not want to pay a L20 (1 dollar) entrance fee.

Many Honduran artists, musicians, authors, folkdance groups, etc. look to the Honduran Ministry of Culture, Arts and Sports (SCAD) for help, but as former Vice Minister of Culture Salvador Suazo used to say, 80% of the budget of SCAD goes to support sports, particularly the “Selección Nacional”, the national team that competes in Soccer World Cup eliminations and, if lucky, the World Cup finals.

 After the Ministry pays for sports, a full time marimba band which plays Honduran folkdance music of the Ladinos, a permanant folkdance group for Ladino folkdances, folkdance festivals of Ladino folkdances, libraries and the National Archive, it has no money left, and especially no money for minority ethnic groups who are not represented or funded at all by the office of Popular Culture of the Ministry. The National Garifuna Folklore Ballet, previously part of SCAD and its  office of Folklore, the predecessor of the Popular Culture office, is now administratively an autonomous organization part of Casa Garinagu (Garifuna House), located near Central Park.

In a recent La Prensa article, that national paper reported that the National Art Galley, run by the Ministry of Culture (SCAD), had closed its doors in Tegucigalpa, because it did not have money for salaries and utilities and in fact owed months of back pay to its employees.  

 It is also a mystery why  the Honduran Ministry of Culture has an attitude of not commercially using its marimba group, folkdance group, printing company, etc., to make money.  Prior to Hurricane Mitch, they even had a recording studio. There are no commercially available CD’s of Honduran folkdance music for sale, no commercially available video of Honduran folkdances, and it is very difficult to find out what books the Ministry has published and where they are sold. With all the assets it has, why it sells or promotes nothing, not even its own programs, and thus has no money for more arts and cultural programs in Honduras, is a mystery to people who work in the Arts in Honduras. The Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes does have a website if people are interested in knowing what the Honduran government makes known about Honduran culture.   

The Honduran Minister of Culture Dr. Tulio Mariano Gonzales offered to do a book presentation of Antonieta Maximo’s new book of poetry, “Duda”, but it has not happened yet. Although the only costs of a book presentation are invitations and maybe some soft drinks afterwards,  the current economic crisis of the Honduran government apparently makes it difficult for Honduran government cultural organizations like SCAD and the Honduran Institute of History and Anthropology (IHAH) to find even these minor resources to help support poets and historians who write books published in Honduras.

When I offered to do a book presentation of the new book “Gold Mining, Black Slaves and Interethnic Relations in the XVI century” written by Pastor Gomez and published by IHAH, during African Heritage Month (April) in Trujillo this year to help make known this excellent book which explains who were the non-Garifuna blacks in Honduras in this period and has one of the best descriptions of slavery and how it arose and developed to come to the New World that I have seen in any language, the person from IHAH in charge in Trujillo said, “No”, because they would have to send out invitations. My attempts to have them make available for sale in Trujillo this book have failed, although they do have a small bookshop here in the fort.

 Dr. Tulio Mariano Gonzales, a Garifuna from Trujillo who had previously been a Congressman in the Central American Parliament for 6 years,  became Minister of Culture after  a scandal caused by the previous Minister of Culture having spent the whole year’s budget in 6 months, so he started with a serious deficit to begin with, so the fact that they have done anything, like publish Miskito Indian  Scott Wood’s book La Mosquitia Desde Adentro (The Mosquitia from the Inside) in May 2013, or helped support  a seminar on editing Wikipedia pages for the Network of Local Historians in Siguatepeque in August 2013 , donated books published by the Ministry to the reading program in Pinalejo, Santa Barbara and gone to unprecedented Council of Minister meetings in expensive places like Puerto Lempira in the Mosquitia is to be commended.

Honduras has two specialized high schools for the Arts, la Escuela de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts High School) in Tegucigalpa which emphasizes the plastic arts like painting, sculpting, drawing, etc. and Victoriano Lopez Music School in San Pedro Sula, which combines playing classical western musical instruments with a regular high school curriculum. These were both founded decades before it was popular to have fine arts high schools in the US.

 Students from the Fine Arts High School often go on to become high school art teachers, like David Flores who teaches in Teguicgalpa and Maxima Tomas, a Garifuna painter who used to teach in Tela, and many also sell paintings commercially as Napoleon Villalta Crespo and Maxima Tomas did previously in Tela. The students who graduate from the Victoriano often receive scholarships to study internationally and many end up playing in orchestras outside of Honduras, reported Fernando Aparicio, a San Pedro Sula businessman whose son attends there.

 Both survive based on multiple funding streams, including from the Honduran Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, reduced tuition paid by parents, and in the case of the Victoriano help from the San Pedro Sula city government. All of these funding streams have been cut or eliminated.  Particularly with the School of Fine Arts it is not clear if it will continue to exist as a high school, or if it will become annexed to the university’s art program because of lack of funds to keep it open and reorganization within the Ministry of Education, reported a retired high school arts teacher from there. 

The topic of the lack of government funding for art, literature, books, plays, etc. and the decision to invest principally in agriculture, most of the projects of which did not give good results,  is a reoccurring theme in Cesar Indiano’s very interesting and beautifully written book, Los Hijos del Infortunio (The Sons of Misfortune).  His comments on the decision to invest in agriculture  which led to developing people who have unfulfillable thirst and hunger for food and full bellies, instead of culture which might have inspired them and led to them creating works of beauty and  work for people who create beauty are intriguing and not as implausible as it might sound.

My city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has indeed invested in art, such as donating buildings for artists and art projects in the inner city, as a way to stabilize some neighborhoods. Where Antonieta Maximo lives in New York is in a building for artists which was built as a way to stabilize the Times Square area which it did. Even the creation of the UNAH’s Center for Art and Culture (UNAH.CAC) on Parque La Libertad in Comayagüela, Tegucigalpa’s twin city, was to stabilize a neighborhood that was going downhill right in front of the Fine Arts High School and the Immaculate Conception Church, originally built to serve the Indians of Comayagüela in the colonial period. This made the Fine Arts students afraid to take the bus there.

 According to a former student of the Fine Arts High School, Abner Flores, the creation of this UNAH Art Center was effective in controlling the spiraling downhill slide of that neighborhood and in fact he had no problems taking the bus during three years there. When we visited the park and the UNAH-CAC for the Central American Linguist’s Conference in August 2013, the park seemed safe and clean, even better kept that La Merced Park in front of the Museum of Art in central Tegucigalpa. So it seems investing in arts does help control crime and inspire beauty even in a time of financial crisis.

The fact that Honduras’s small cities have kept alive dance-theater presentations like Guancascos in Gracias and Mejicapa or Moors and Christians in Ojojona and in Trujillo and in Ocotepeque, or that Danza del Diablito in Comayagua is part of the 1578 play of the Martyrdom of San Sebastian which has been presented most years since it was brought to Honduras before the Pilgrims even thought of going to the US, shows that in spite of the poverty for which these areas are famous, many Honduran people value art and keep it alive at great personal sacrifice of time and money.   New York Broadway plays count success in months or years of playing on Broadway, in Honduras some of these shows have been playing for centuries.

Given the current economic crisis both within Honduras and among the countries who have traditionally been donors and tourists, this is a hard time to depend on art, and especially on national funding of art and culture, in Honduras. Yet there are independent Garifunas artists like Cruz Bermudez in Tela of Galería El Aura down the street a little from Villas Telamar, Herman Alvarez of San Juan outside of Tela  and Lino Leiva in Trujillo who sells in the beach restaurants at lunchtime that keep their families fed and in school  with what they make selling paintings. Lino says, “Thank God that I have this gift, this talent that I can paint and with this I maintain fed my family.” Cruz Bermudez in particular would like to teach other young people along the Coast to paint, but has not found support to do so yet.

 

US artist who has lived in Honduras for many years Guillermo Yuscaran also reports that tourist buying of his books and paintings has gone down as tourism in Honduras has gone down due to reports of crime. I am interested in trying to bring up Honduran paintings for painting exhibitions, maybe through a National Endowment of the Arts grants.