Why ENTRESURES?

While sharing a language and history might suggest the possibility of community and collaboration among countries, said factor often serves, quite to the contrary, as one of the instruments via which south-south divergence is exercised and becomes manifest in Latin America. There is a generalized lack of knowledge and/or disinterest among the people of Latin American nations, in what takes place in Latin American countries beyond our own borders. Undeniably, said fact brings about definitive social, economic and political repercussions. One of the fundamental motives of said divergence resides in a phenomenon of historical amnesia; the lack of memory provoked by, and consequent with, the vertiginous race to secure a positioning within the group of so-denominated “first world” nations (as well as said nations’ recognition and anointment). All of this, under the assumption that the globalization process integrates and includes, while it is overlooked that, in fact, said phenomenon entails exclusion and forgetting, given that this process is articulated within a framework established by and according to the standards and parameters of socially, culturally and economically dominant nations. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, it is not to suggest that we must disengage ourselves from said process, but rather that we should, in this perhaps inevitable effort to secure a positioning, build and strengthen our ties with other Latin American countries, so as to develop and promote our cultural, social and historical wealth and diversity. In general terms, in Latin America, there is a broader knowledge of the recent history and cultural production of the “norths”, than of that of the “souths”, which is to say, of other Latin American countries.

There is a great deal of attention placed, when such is the case, on promoting our cultural production within the “norths”, while little or no attention is placed on its promotion among other “souths”. One example via which this distance is expressed, is the contemporary landscape of the publishing industry. it is a fact that “today, […] one can’t find books from Ecuador in Argentina, nor Paraguayan books in Peru; Uruguayans have a greater presence in Europe than in Latin America, Chileans are seldom found in other countries and, in this same tenor, all of the continent’s countries can be named. Aside from multinational groups, only the handful of large publishers enjoy generalized distribution”. In addition, “The UNESCO report titled Our Creative Diversity, (known as the Pérez Cuellar report), insists on the danger implicit in the possibility that the internationalization of cultural processes might ‘inundate other tastes and interests’, and more so, taking into account that ‘for the poorest, their own values are often the only thing they can affirm’. In another passage, the report expresses that ‘insofar as the cultural industries acquire great economic importance, an inevitable tension is generated between the objectives which are essentially cultural, and the logic of the market; between commercial interests and the desire for a content that reflects diversity’.” Regardless of the commercial factors that may influence this unevenness and the lack of partnership evidenced by said examples, writers, editors and hence readers (generally speaking) remain uninformed and disengaged with regard to the contemporary literary and general cultural production of other Latin American countries. It is only via a real and personal immersion within the realities, contexts and thinking of cultures historically and socially linked to our own, via the building of affective ties, that we may learn to work together in favor of our diversity.

In general terms, the Latin American gatherings that are held –and which are, in fact, few— whether among writers (national and international book fairs, seminars, conferences, presentations, etc.) or among persons belonging to other arts and expressions, are carried out within an institutional or commercial framework. Despite the positive scope of the efforts generated as a result of said gatherings, the design as such of these assemblages does not entail intimate exchange, much less the possibility of real collaboration (except that which is engaged upon with commercial purposes) among said actors. In these cases, the focus is rather centered on the promotion of the regional literary production and/or on the exploration of commercial distribution opportunities. Even so, and notwithstanding the value that said efforts may very well entail, rarely, if at all, are collaborative projects such as that proposed by ENTRESURES, developed; ENTRESURES is designed to enable the writer and researcher to immerse him/herself in the reality, culture and thinking of a nation historically and socially linked to his/her own, to explore the living history of said nation, to establish an intimate and dynamic dialog, and to be an active part of “south-south” convergence.

It is also infrequent that literary exchanges or gatherings be accompanied by the social sciences. The presence of the sociologist in this correspondence and visits will serve not only to establish ties between literature and the social sciences, but also to lay the groundwork for the weft of correspondence among sociologists of different countries.

The importance of the effort undertaken by ENTRESURES is compounded by the fact that between 2008 and 2011, the bicentennial of the declarations of independence of many of the regions’ countries, will be celebrated, an occurrence which will acquire special importance in Mexico with the double bicentennial of the declaration of independence of said country and the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, an event that may well be denominated bis/centennial. This is a unique opportunity to bring together a critical remembrance of the past, with the envisioning of new social scenarios. The celebration of the first centennial of the independence movement, in 1910, is decisive for many countries, on several levels: cultural movements were consolidated or were formed with the celebration of the centennial celebration of independence (the case of Lugones in Argentina, the Ateneo group in Mexico, the so-named centennial generation of Colombia), a great deal of public urban works were designed, and stand still today, as symbols of remembrance (there is an abundance of avenues with that name). And in some cases, as is that of Mexico, the centennial was remembered with the Mexican Revolution, started in the same year as the celebration, which became an ideological motive. The celebration of great national holidays has been very important in the recent past for many countries: the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution gave way to the publication of one of the greatest works on cultural memory, written by Pierre Nora. The celebration of the bicentennial of the American Revolution coincided with a renewed emphasis on human rights. The celebration of fifth anniversary of the discovery of America was the portal for Spain’s full integration to Europe. It can be presumed that the celebration of the bicentennial of the independence of Latin America is to coincide with the search for new national projects, hopefully within democratic contexts. Undoubtedly, we are going to witness an acceleration of the times, given the fact that these symbolic dates often trigger a revisiting of the past and a projection toward the future.

Echoing a comment issued to this respect by Silvia Aguilera, of LOM Editors in Chile, “We believe, thus, in the power of writing as an act that liberates, and in this context, we understand that role as an exercise intended to awaken, call attention to, provoke, produce tension, the rupture or the connection that signifies a glimmer, a contribution to the medium in which we are inserted, a contribution to reflection and critique. Our role should contribute in such a way that our people appropriate themselves of their past in order to see themselves and find themselves within it, to think it and build a future, contributing, in turn, to avoiding the imposition of a logic that violates the human species. The intervention […] is to remind ourselves each day that we are alive and that we have the capacity to think and propose, that there are other worlds to be known, that we can think ourselves from the place where we are, that the act of creating is an act of building, a propositive act, that we can still be the subjects of our history.”

In its literary dimension, ENTRESURES explores the continuities between the memory of older members of our communities and the projects of its younger members. In its sociological breadth, the project aspires to explore a retro/prospective history of the six participating countries, showing,, in each case, how personal histories are linked to collective histories and how the representation of the past and the projection toward the future, are defined in the present.