This editorial appeared in number 2/3 (1983) of the magazine U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual (Lima). The text refers to the ongoing failures of the Peruvian government’s cultural organizations over the course of two decades, including the “frustrated populism” and “devastating and fleeting policies of the APRA party” that led to the current severe crisis. The editorial criticizes the incompetence of the government’s handling of a culture that does not represent major swaths of the population and operates under its own hegemony, resulting in a culture that is “a solitary and esoteric practice, a luxury exercise carried out on behalf of segments [of society] that are living indulgently at a distance from the real Peru.” The editorial also condemns the serious decline of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC) [National Institute of Culture], from which no aspect of the Peruvian government’s cultural policies is exempt and which is visible in “the depredation, indifference, and abandonment of the country’s cultural projects and resources.” This gloomy situation does not, however, affect the bulk of the population “that has little or nothing to do with high culture or with the crumbling of the country’s institutions.” Against this backdrop, Buntinx notes that “the different culture of the Peruvian lower classes exists and continues to be expressed as an alternative.”  

U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual was a magazine that enjoyed a brief lifespan in Peru (only three issues were published, between 1982 and 1984). It was directed by the art historian Alfonso Castrillón (b. 1935), edited (beginning with the second issue) by the art critic Gustavo Buntinx (b. 1957), and designed by Jesús Ruiz Durand (b. 1940), a visual artist who was known for the graphic designs he produced for the General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75) government as part of its reappraisal of the country’s rural population and agricultural sector. The magazine took a social-Marxist approach to art and was part of the broader movement that emerged in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the work of theorists such as the Peruvian Juan Acha (1916–1995) and the Argentinean Néstor García Canclini (b. 1939) (both of whom lived in Mexico), the Brazilian Mario Pedrosa (1900–1981), Mirko Lauer (b. 1947), and the above-mentioned Castrillón.

Each issue of the magazine was devoted to a particular subject; the second issue (number 2/3), where this text appeared, focused on Peruvian museums and the ideological aspect of culture that Castrillón had been studying since the early 1980s. Castrillón’s writings on this subject were driven by the (1981–83) controversy over the plans for a new Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Antropología [National Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology] in Lima although, in his earliest essays, he explored the relationship between culture and museums. In his opinion, “the dominant concern in Latin America has been a desire to save the museum in administrative terms, while failing to realize that the problem runs far deeper than that.” In Gramscian terms, the problem must be addressed “from the perspective of culture” and the major objective should be to ensure that “the museum becomes a promoter of living culture” (El diario de Marka, 7/9/1980, p. 10). This is the approach taken in this text, which appeared as an editorial on the back cover of the magazine. It includes the first version of the survey on Peruvian museums that he conducted (a later version was published by the UNMSM (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos) [National University of San Marcos] in 1983).  

[See the ICAA digital archive for other articles published in U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual magazine: “Águila, tigre, Che Guevara, Rosa de los Vientos,” by Gustavo Buntinx (doc. no. 1292492); “Afiches de la Reforma Agraria: otra experiencia trunca,” by Jesús Ruiz Durand (doc. no. 1139386); “Desbordar los límites” (anonymous) (doc. no. 1292558); “Hacia una crítica marxista del marxismo. Entre Marx y la Estética,” by Gustavo Buntinx et al (doc. no. 1292607); “La necesidad del arte,” by Juan Wilfredo et al (doc. no. 130282); and “López Antay: significación actual,” by Alfonso Castríllo Vizcarra (doc. no. 1136495)].