La Jornada: The opening of a cabaret in the Casa del Poeta causes “deep indignation”

The House of the Poet Ramón López Velarde “will not change its name or vocation,” Clara Brugada, head of Government of Mexico City, guaranteed yesterday, said Alfonso Suárez del Real, political advisor to the Presidency spokesperson. The installation of a cabaret there, considered a “personal project” of Ana Francis López, head of Culture in the capital, has generated “deep indignation” in the cultural community. The neighbors disapprove of this proposal, because they have fought for years against the black turns.

Suárez del Real, former head of the Ministry of Culture of Mexico City, expressed to The Day that the local leader told him: “you keep the name, the vocation and the revitalization, and not with the use of the word ‘cabaret’, but of café concert.”

After the announcement that the venue would become the House of Words, issued a few days ago, the cultural community rejected the abandonment of the name of the Zacatecan poet and the forgetting of “a fragment of the cultural history of our city,” in the words of the writer Marco Antonio Campos.

Suárez del Real expressed to The Day that Brugada “knew about the revitalization of cultural proposals, but not about the name change.”

The journalist also said: “Clara understood that it is the urban cultural heritage of Rome, since it was the first cultural space of the colony and was a bastion of the legitimate neighborhood demand to generate more culture and less black turns.”

The advisor recalled that Casa del Poeta, inaugurated in 1991, was the first cultural center on Álvaro Obregón Avenue, which makes it fundamental in the area.

The property was expropriated to “generate a cultural center in homage to the Zacatecas poet Ramón López Velarde, who died in one of the apartments of that property. Since this expropriation process, its vocation is that of a cultural center,” commented Suárez del Real.

He explained that the neighbors have no problem enriching and revitalizing the cultural proposal with new movements, to use their tongues and talk about Afro things, but the name cabaret is not well received by them, when they have been fighting against black movements for so many years.

Andrés Carreño, coordinator of the venue, is known for his collaborations with the cabaret company Las Reinas Chulas, which has included Ana Francis López since 1998.

“The memory of the poet is belittled”

Yesterday, the poet Eduardo Mosches disclosed in this newspaper’s El Correo Ilustrado his rejection of the measure.

“The contempt for poetry and the memory of the poet is a concrete result of changing the name of the space and its functions to a supposed and neo-popular cabaret, which is part of the personal project of the Secretary of Culture.”

The writer said he was hopeful that “this bureaucratic action will be discarded, that cultural memory will not be erased and that poetry and its dissemination will continue to be the space of the Poet’s House.”

Also in El Correo Ilustrado, the chronicler and poet Marco Antonio Campos, a contributor to this newspaper, spread the “deep indignation” over the name change of the Ramón López Velarde house, “which Maricarmen Ferez Kuri managed magnificently for more than three decades. Confusing the small space with the Salón Ángeles, to appear open and popular, they are going to open the first public cabaret in Mexico City.”

Yesterday, María de Jesús Muñoz Reyes, general director of the Ramón López Velarde Institute of Culture of Zacatecas, published a letter in which she admitted she was disconcerted by the opening of La Casa de las Palabras and “that it will no longer be a meeting space dedicated to poetry.”

He reaffirmed the commitment to “preserve, disseminate and exalt the figure of Ramón López Velarde, whose work constitutes one of the most important literary legacies of Mexico and our cultural identity,” and that “the spaces linked to his memory continue to recognize and project his legacy.”

As head of the state’s cultural policy, the official reported that she will seek “a respectful and constructive dialogue with the corresponding authorities, in order to analyze the alternatives that allow the name of Ramón López Velarde to remain present in that venue, as current as his work continues to be.”

The House of Words was inaugurated last Thursday in the building that for decades housed the House of the Poet Ramón López Velarde. Then, Ana Francis López expressed that “the new vocation of the venue is not limited to literature, but seeks to open its doors to all expressions of the word.”

It was then announced that the space will house the offices of Procine CDMX and the International Poster Biennial in Mexico, in addition to working to add a bookstore of the Economic Culture Fund and the first public cabaret in the city.