The budget received by the School of Luthiery from the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL), located in Querétaro, barely amounts to one million pesos… but in the last four years!, as revealed by information obtained through transparency , which confirms the unspeakable: this project, which will be 35 years old in 2022, has no relevance to the current management of Lucina Jimenez and of Alejandra Frausto.
It is somewhat contradictory, but it has not occurred to either of the two officials that propping up the School of Luthiery could solve the lack of instruments in the academies of the institute itself, such as the National Conservatory of Music and the Superior School of Music, at least with respect to bowed string instruments (violins, violas and cellos).
Why not invest in Laudería so that it becomes an academy that produces instruments for the cultural hotbeds that are promoted so much? Why not look for their graduates to be the generating base of string instruments for the country’s community groups and ensembles or for the Carlos Chávez School Orchestra?
Let’s see the annual amounts assigned to Laudería in recent years: 255 thousand 787 pesos (2019), 276 thousand 942 pesos (2021), 324 thousand 519 pesos (2022) and 206 thousand 609 pesos (as of October 2022).
These figures are lower than those provided by the previous administration and reveal a 50% cut in the budget, which confirms that this institution, which is often presumed to be the only one in Latin America for having a degree in String Instruments, does not form part of the substantive activities of INBAL or of the federal Ministry of Culture.
This adjustment is evident if we compare the budget of four previous years, when it received 2.3 million pesos: 531 thousand 187 in 2015, 727 thousand 856 in 2016, 532 thousand 012 in 2017 and 571 thousand 172 in 2018, despite which enrollment has maintained at an average of 26 students per period.
Another disturbing fact is that INBAL additionally pays an annual rent of one million 597 thousand 367 pesos (VAT included) for the school facilities, located at Miguel Hidalgo 20, Historic Center of Querétaro, according to the most recent contract , which reflects the nonsense of the cultural authorities, since they allocate five times more resources to the rent of the property than to the academy itself.
In addition, there is no official information about the supposed new headquarters of the School of Laudería that would be built on land that the government of Querétaro donated to INBAL in 2012. As I wrote in chips in the air (excelsior02/4/2022), Teresa Vicencio –then head of the INBA and current administrative secretary of El Colegio Nacional, an institution that houses some of the most renowned intellectuals in Mexico, such as javier garciadiego, Juan Villoro, Enrique Krauze Y Leonardo Lopez Lujanamong many others– signed an agreement with local authorities to receive the donation and start work on the new headquarters.
In this regard, INBAL reported that “after carrying out an exhaustive and reasonable search in the files of the General Subdirectorate for Artistic Education and Research (SGEIA), no files related to the relocation and construction of the new headquarters of the School were located. Laudería; as well as the destiny of the land of six thousand square meters”.
I still don’t understand why Lucina Jimenez has not taken the initiative to call Vicencio to talk about this case. Was there a donation? Did the project and budget exist as announced? Was it a fraud or an act of propaganda? And she herself could wonder if it is worth it to continue paying a million-dollar rent when the cultural project faces budgetary starvation.
