CCS Tegucigalpa

Cultural Centre of Spain in Tegucigalpa

The Cultural Centre of Spain in Tegucigalpa (CCST) opened its doors in 2007, and so it has already accumulated a significant history in Honduras, where its contributions to the promotion of Spanish and Ibero-American culture and creativity and to development are widely acknowledged. Society recognises the CCST as a modern centre dedicated to the creation and dissemination of avant-garde cultural expressions. Furthermore, it is a focal point for the cultural dynamics of the region, for the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity, and for the construction of a more inclusive and sustainable society. The Honduran socio-political and cultural reality determines CCST’s strategic approaches and main lines of action. In common with other countries in Central America, Honduras presents certain characteristics that have a special influence on the development of its society and culture. These include aspects such as ethnic diversity – the country has a significant indigenous and African-descendant population, and hence presents linguistic and cultural diversity; other relevant questions include the lack of public safety, which affects the daily lives of many people; the migratory phenomenon and the country’s geographical configuration itself, at the midpoint between the Southern Cone and North America; the unstructured nature of the cultural sector; and the lack of access to and consumption of cultural products by a broad range of society. In this context, the arrival of the CCST in the Honduran cultural scene represented a dynamic new approach, raising the profile of these issues and generating change. The Centre, very noticeably, offered an open, pluralist space, with a regularlychanging programme of events, open to all, in which special emphasis was placed on the promotion of creativity and on enabling access to culture for the new generations. The Centre organised over 400 activities each year, thus encouraging local artistic processes. Its membership of an international group of Cultural Centres, under the aegis of Spanish Cooperation, has helped the CCST construct an important network of contacts dedicated to cultural and social collaboration. In addition, it maintains a healthy relationship with local institutions and works with government agencies in relevant areas, including the Executive Directorate for Culture and Arts, the Ministry of Education and the National Directorate for Indigenous Peoples and African Hondurans. Thanks to its less institutional profile and its greater proximity to the work carried out by the third sector, the CCST is able to work very closely with cultural actors at all levels, and very specially with the Committee of Cultural Centres, which represents the main cultural agents of Tegucigalpa. The CCST cooperates in the implementation of public policies in the institutional area, especially in the field of culture and public involvement. In this respect, important work has been done in the historic centre of the capital and in other Honduran municipalities, via the project Más Allá del Centro (Beyond the Centre). Spanish Cooperation has traditionally been very active in providing training for specialists in the field of cultural management, both in the public sector and in private entities, and in Honduras the CCST has maintained this pattern of contribution. Training courses are regularly given with and for Honduran cultural actors, either in matters related directly to cultural management, or in those which are necessary to achieve greater social inclusion and to create a society that fairer and more environmentally sustainable. Since the CCST opened, it has offered a valuable showcase for local creativity in fruitful coexistence with artistic offerings from Spain and

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1. Collective Ibero-American Exhibition Ilustrando feminismos (Illustrating feminisms), 2018 2. Garífuna dance show in the Living Cultures season, 2017

other parts of Ibero-America, collaborating in cultural entrepreneurship and promoting cultural and creative enterprises. Each year, a dozen or more exhibitions of visual arts are presented at the Centre, reflecting the trends of the emerging vanguard; in addition, there are lectures and round tables on cultural, social and economic current affairs, book presentations, concerts, performances, drama, dance and film screenings for all tastes. In accordance with its international vocation, the CCST contributes to the operations of regional networks across the cultural spectrum, both public and private. In this regard, the Centre not only provides a stage for the presence of local cultural products and artists, it also facilitates cultural mobility, whether by supporting international tours or, especially, by proposing inter-country artistic residencies. The Centre also lends important support to Central American integration, via collaborative projects and enabling exchanges of best practices. In addition to the above, the CCST is a point of encounter for cultural activists and artists in Tegucigalpa, as a venue for shows and exhibitions, collaborating not only in the arts, but also with related social entities. The opening, in 2017, of Babelia 3.0, as a space for creativity and diversity has attracted organisations of all types, facilitating support for Honduran civil society and international NGOs. At the same time, the CCST provides a space for encounter, collaboration and debate without fear of confrontation, and even encourages critical thinking about its own role. The Centre’s Medialab service facilitates the use of new technologies by creators, in areas such as project consulting or the launch of innovative creative products or ventures; the CCST also collaborates with other agencies in this field and, above all, offers programmes oriented towards technical training and the creation of a digital culture, by means of technology such as CreaLAB. The CCST pays special attention to cultural identity, individual rights and the preservation and protection of vulnerable sectors of the population. Thanks to its proximity and collaboration with local and international organisations, the CCST is well placed to promote women’s rights, gender equality and assistance for social groups at risk of exclusion such as LGBTI groups. In this context, too, the CCST has made important changes in its processes and facilities, seeking to make the Centre more inclusive, especially for people with different abilities, and to become more environmentally sustainable. Honduras is a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual country, with indigenous and Africandescendant populations that retain their own languages. The nation, therefore, has a wealth of cultural expressions; the Centre works to preserve this cultural diversity and to make it better known throughout the national population. Accordingly, in close collaboration with civil society organisations and other public institutions, the CCST vigorously promotes diversity-related activities. One such is its work to raise awareness and understanding of the country’s languages, by initiatives such as the publication of Diccionario de las Lenguas de Honduras (Dictionary of the Languages of Honduras). The Centre also highlights awareness among the general public of the cultural practices of indigenous peoples through its organisation of lecture seasons such as Living Cultures of Honduras. The circumstances of Tegucigalpa, where citizen insecurity directly affects the enjoyment and practice of culture, have led the CCST to emphasise actions that should be taken to prevent violence and educate against it, in order to create a culture of peace. One such is the Crearte (CreateArt) project, which involves civil society and the city’s cultural fabric in activities like Recreovías por la Paz (Pathways to Peace through Culture and Sport). In addition, a dynamic policy has been adopted to recover spaces for public use, such as the Redondel de los Artesanos park and the historic centre of Tegucigalpa, promoting their ownership and generating spaces where people can meet and socialise. In the last decade, the Centre has worked tirelessly to help preserve and promote cultural diversity, through cross-cutting approaches to gender issues, human rights and the environment. Specifically, it has supported ideas, projects and actions in areas such as recovering public spaces, strengthening institutions, preventing violence and supporting creators. The Cultural Centre acts to achieve and maintain free access to culture, which it considers an essential part of sustainable human development. Like all the other Cultural Centres operating as part of Spanish Cooperation, the

3. Poster for the lecture “El pueblo Miskitu” (the Miskitu people), as part of the “Living Cultures of Honduras” season

3 CCST takes the view that in order to overcome the challenges that constantly arise, throughout the world, it is essential to create an inclusive, diverse society. The Centre’s future policies and actions will necessarily be based on addressing the challenges facing the cultural sector and Honduran society today. In this respect, the Centre benefits from its experience and advantages with respect to other cultural agents. On the one hand, its role as an agent of cooperation for development provides it with a unique perspective on culture and obliges it to reach out towards the most vulnerable population sectors and to pursue the goal of sustainability. On the other, the fact that the Centre has its own dimension of cooperation – something not available to other cultural agents – underpins its support for internationalisation and for enhancing relations among the creative sectors of Honduras, Spanish and the other nations of Central America. In this context, the CCST, assuming that respect for cultural diversity must exist as a crosscutting focus within Spanish Cooperation’s strategy of association with Honduras, and that it must continue to work in this field (in accordance with the 2030 Agenda), will work to recover public spaces, to design and implement cultural policies inhibiting violence and to extend the bounds of social innovation. It will also propose further actions based on intercultural dialogue, freedom of expression and creation, and the effective participation of citizens in cultural life, paying special attention to persons living in vulnerable situations. To do so, the Cultural Centre will promote alternative cultural activities, enhance cooperation through continuous dialogue with creative agents and cultural networks, help provide capacity-building programmes and work to safeguard the cultural heritage of Honduras.

Creativity and Development

Mario Hernán Mejía

Director of Culture at The National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH)

Culture forms part of the actions for development taken by Spanish Cooperation, in emblematic programmes including Cultural Heritage, the Network of Cultural Centres in America and Africa, the Network of Ibero-American Training Workshops and Training Centres in Latin America. In Honduras, these programmes have made a notable contribution to revitalising its historic city centres, in coordination with local governments and the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. The Comayagua Colonial Programme deserves special mention as a benchmark for managing material cultural heritage and establishing local cultural policies, applying vision, political leadership, technical capacity and citizen participation, all of which are crucial to the sustainability of this heritage. The Cultural Centre of Spain in Tegucigalpa (CCST) joined the Network of Cultural Centres in mid-2007, with a clear understanding that culture and development are tightly linked. Accordingly, the Centre promotes free access to its cultural offers, a policy that has led the CCST to play a major role in the artistic-cultural scene of Tegucigalpa, and elsewhere in the country with its project Más Allá del Centro (Beyond the Centre). The CCST participates in cooperation for development by strengthening individual and institutional capacities in fundamental matters such as cultural policies, heritage management, cultural management and the enhancement of linguistic and cultural diversity. The Honduras Virtual Library of Literature, which forms part of the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library, is a repository of Honduran literary and intellectual production that was inaugurated by the Prince of Asturias, now King Felipe VI of Spain. This project resulted from strategic alliances made by the Centre with academic, scientific and cultural institutions, and has given rise to remarkable works such as the Dictionary of the Languages of Honduras, edited in collaboration with the Honduran Academy of Language. En Clave AfroCaribe (Afro-Caribbean Notes) is an outstanding project on the Garífuna language and its literature, comprising an investigation of the musical expressions of the African-descendant populations of the Caribbean coast of Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The Cultural Centres of Spain in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic have participated in this project, the results of which are published in book form and as a CD. The CCST has organised a wide variety of events, including exhibitions, workshops, reading programmes, book fairs, concerts, film festivals and round tables on Spanish, Ibero-American, Central American and Honduran art. The CCST is active in generating cultural capacities, and has collaborated with the National Autonomous University of Honduras in promoting international seminars on cultural management. The third such Seminar, in 2014, focused on university cultural policies and strategies; the fourth, in 2016, on cultural observatories; the fifth, in 2017, on cultural management for local development; the sixth, in 2018, on the generation of cultural capacities for the SDGs; and the seventh, in 2019, on the creative economy and territorial development. Lastly, one of the factors highlighting the importance of the CCST in Honduran cultural life is its management model based on the recognition of cultural rights of access and citizen participation. The implementation of a criteria of proximity underpins the Centre’s identity as a plural, open space, promoting ongoing dialogue with Spanish culture, language and art, addressing contemporary artistic and cultural expressions of all the identities represented in Honduras.

A space for diverse, inclusive identities

América Mejía

Co-founder and director of Mujeres en las Artes (Women in the Arts), a non-profit organisation founded in 1995. Member of the Citizen Commission of the Historic Centre and of the Tegucigalpa Committee of Cultural Centres.

The reality of our local context is that the social and political environment is unfavourable to the promotion of cultural rights, in the sense of political participation and individual freedom to express oneself on cultural issues. What do we see today in the country? The more the creative sector is dominated by the private sector, the less creative content is offered to foster cultural diversity, practices, exchanges and dialogues – despite the necessity of these expressions among the different sectors. This reality suggests that we are currently failing to differentiate between what is merely accessory and what is actually necessary for cultural and artistic development in Honduras. In contrast to this pessimistic outlook, the Cultural Centre of Spain in Tegucigalpa (CCST) has revitalised, mediated and facilitated the cultural scenario during the past ten years. It has made significant contributions to local artistic practices in promoting the professionalisation of the sector. In particular, it has fostered the view that creation should produce an internal change, that it should put a spoke in the wheel of the runaway human machine, that it should make us uneasy and spur us to think differently. This concern has been at the forefront of the CCST’s calls for artists to expand the practices of their production and thus call reality into question. This space has been shared by many creators, but above all by women, artists whose proposals have found a place in the CCST for expression and for the declaration of rights that have so often been denied and silenced. An example of this is the project El tiempo que nos quedó en la carne (The time left us in the flesh) by Lía Vallejo, a visual artist, who exposes and discusses a universal problem, one that is transposed into shame, ignorance and power, and which constitutes one of humanity’s greatest

atrocities: child abuse, perpetrated by religious authorities and tolerated by institutional policies. It was the CCST that welcomed this artist and her work. The CCST performs valuable work with the Network of Cultural Centres of Spain, through exchanges, collaborative projects, residencies and itinerant exhibitions. This cooperation is especially important following the budget restrictions imposed on programmes for cultural cooperation in the 1990s. Many of the artistic platforms and projects that had been promoted in Central America have since disappeared or been reduced to isolated elements. This situation has added to the complex reality of the national cultural scene, a significant factor in a country where there is currently little circulation and expression of languages that allow the development of critical and reflective thinking within artistic practice, whereby social actors are encouraged to criticise, recreate and alter the states of things. In the last five years in particular, one of the Centre’s priority commitments has been to promote the creation of content for adult education and public awareness, acknowledging that rights are more widely recognised when society talks about them. In this agenda, the CCST is a leading force, holding debates, meetings and round tables, both within organised civil society and among alternative groups of diverse identities. The opening of the new Babelia 3.0 space helped revitalise the CCST, providing it with a participative, open agenda including the promotion of rights in gender equality, environmental issues, the rights and needs of indigenous peoples, sexual diversity and other areas of current concern. To conclude this review, let us note that the CCST has facilitated institutional management through its creation of shared agendas with civil society, for example, in its association with Unicef and Women in the Arts, as an implementer of Crearte, a cultural programme for children and teenagers promoting coexistence and peace, which was carried out in twelve municipalities. The Centre’s fundamental role in the social and cultural dimension, fostering the enjoyment of creativity, is not limited to artists; in our country, it is aimed at the entire population, in the view that culture is a right. Female artists, sexual diversity, citizens’ groups, critical reflection on the question of rights in Honduras…. These issues would not be seen in the same way without the CCST. That is why we celebrate its presence and the contributions it has made to culture in our country.

EL SALVADOR Cultural Centre of Spain San Salvador

Address

Calle La Reforma 166, Colonia San Benito, San Salvador

Opened

1998

Web

https://www.ccesv.org/