Cultural consultation opens with the Reading Promotion forum at the Vasconcelos Library

The Consultation Meetings towards the Culture Sector Program began at the Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City with the Reading Promotion forum. The total of 10 tables will be held from January 7 to 14 in the capital and six other entities: Morelos, Baja California, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Veracruz and Yucatán.

The other topics to be addressed are support for creation, community culture for peace, heritage and cultural diversity in Mexico, cinematographic and audiovisual policies, copyright and collective rights, art and migration, territorial work, creative economy, artistic education and higher studies , national and international spaces and cultures, and public media.

The initial session was headed by Rodrigo Borja Torres, general director of Libraries of the federal Ministry of Culture. The Reading Promotion forum included the following tables: The social dimension of reading beyond school; The inclusive Mexico; Culture of peace and books: emerging spaces to restructure childhoods in crisis and Library extension, a reading bridge.

The interventions were in-person and virtual. The participants were artists, cultural promoters, curators, researchers, students and the general public.

Under the title Bibliodiversity, the banner of social inclusion, editor Deborah Holtz pointed out that this forum poses “an atavistic problem in the country: how to achieve a reading population? For Holtz everything leads to the will of the State to support a public policy that achieves the concatenation of various actions with a common goal: reading.

Therefore, It is urgent to establish a common objective that organizes the responsibilities and actions of government agencies with chambers of representatives and the various instances of civil society at the federal, state and municipal levels.. Also, design the tasks and responsibilities of each department.

Roberto de la Paz and Elizabeth Mora Menchaca, from the state of Morelos, referred to the Walk for Reading. Reading awakens the voice, which has been taking place in Cuernavaca since 2021, on November 12 within the framework of National Book Day and the anniversary of the birth of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It consists of visiting central points of the city, stopping and reading texts aloud. It is about a viable alternative in the reconstruction of the social fabric and the promotion of reading in community intervention actionsassured Mora Menchaca.

Computer specialist Rafael Cabrera Alba asked what types of reading do we want to encourage? That is, what do Mexicans read. He expressed his concern about the transculturation that arises in Mexico, as well as throughout the worlddue to subjugation of foreign literature; the Anglo-Saxon, first of all.

Ulises Gómez Lozano referred to the commitment of mothers to reading to their children, since maternal influence does not usually go beyond nine or 10 years of age. She proposed working with mothers in libraries to promote reading. Ruth Magdalena Galicia Islas spoke on behalf of those who can’t be herethat is to say, the babies. He asked to work for a radical inclusionunderstood as a public policy that embraces the entire life cycle.

Leonardo Pedraza and Bianca Garduño spoke out in favor of the digitization of books in national libraries, as a strategy that opens opportunities. Roxanna Erdman, for her part, requested the inclusion of writing in reading promotion programs, and that digitization is detrimental to writing, I propose creating writing promoters.