Now is the time for the rest of the world to cut ties with El Sistema
mainThe Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has moved swiftly after the death of Jose Antonio Abreu to take state control of the music education foundation, El Sistema.
The new head of El Sistema is Delcy Rodriguez, a former propaganda minister who is now president of Maduro’s laughably-named Constitutional Assembly. There are three other members of the board of directors. One of them is Maduro’s son.
This regime is starving its citizens into submission for the benefit of a clique of kleptocrats.
Now is the time for the rest of the world to cut its ties with El Sistema.
(That means you, Julian, and you, Nicky).
A bit of a headache for Sistema England and Sistema Scotland…
Erm, how,exactly? They have no ties with the Venezuelan project. They simply share a name.
This whole post, in fact, seems to be based upon a fairly sizeable misapprehension about Sistema-based projects beyond Venezuela.
Erm… no ties…?
“We take the Sistema name from the “El Sistema” orchestra movement established in Venezuela in 1975 by Maestro José Antonio Abreu and delivered through the organisation Fundacion Musical Simon Bolivar. We are very proud to be official partners with the original organisation in Venezuela. We seek to benefit from the South Americans’ expertise, while adapting their methods to suit conditions in Scotland.”
https://makeabignoise.org.uk/sistema-scotland/
Yes, punish those children!
Venceremos!
The old kleptocrats want their country and oil back from the new kleptocrats.
But yes, let’s definitely go after the children. That’s just common sense. We have the moral high ground, because we bought it. Hail to the US dollar!
lol
… as if El Sistema is being run for “the children” …
Mr.Anon, the only person who has punished those children was Mr.Abreu himself since the day he entered into that perverse alliance with this criminal regime. Today in a devastated Venezuela those young musicians have lost their country and their future and those who can are looking for a life elsewhere in order to survive. So, what are you talking about?
What are YOU talking about? What option did Mr. Abreu have, other than collaboration with the government de jour?
All these armchair resistance fighters in the free west… ridiculous people.
Carlos Urbaneja is a well-known Venezuelan musician who lives in Venezuela. You, however…
And you know that identity is for real? Anyone can use any name here.
I doubt someone actually living in Venezuela would write about the regime as a ‘criminal regime’, since that is outright dangerous.
lol
Leonard Bernstein would arguably disagree: “This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Maduro and Chavez wanting to be seen next to El Sistema is a predictable strategy common to politicians everywhere, who want to be seen next to what works, and what they can somehow claim to be in their territory. This does not imply that Abreu colluded with either, but we all know the steps one must take to keep a project running, and how important it is to be inclusive of those in power. Beethoven, Shostakovich, Mozart, even Bach had to deal with similar circumstances while engaging political or leadership figures whom they may not have completely agreed with on politics, but depended upon in order to keep their art going. And yes, El Sistema IS for the children. They are the greatest winners. Abreu’s ideology of making music and art a right of citizenship is a lesson to all of us elsewhere, and let’s face it: it worked. I worked in numbers, in quality, in expansion, and in inclusion. I find it difficult to find another person like Abreu, in any other country, poor or rich, who has done so much for an entire nation as Abreu has done in Venezuela. Politics and economics are a separate issue, dealt with in political and economic spheres. To punish El Sistema for the other woes facing Venezuela is akin to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Before anyone else comes on here and starts fantasizing about Abreu and El Sistema and politics, they should read this: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/04/06/opinion-abreu-venezuela-sistema/. What is happening now is not an anomaly – it’s the logical endpoint of Abreu’s strategy of musical populism.
‘Musical populism’
wow, just wow…
Sure, keep it to the elite. Let the commoners have their own ‘nigger’ music, right?
You didn’t read the article, did you?
I remain skeptical of much written in “The New York Times”. That’s always my starting position and then I have to read more widely.
A very wise position, and not just in relation to the NYT. Nonetheless, this article is by someone who understands how culture and politics work in Venezuela.
Excellent wider reading in this instance would be “El cuerpo dócil de la cultura: poder, cultura y comunicación en la Venezuela de Chávez,” by Manuel Silva-Ferrer.
Of course he didn’t.
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2018/03/28/timeserver/?param=wotd-email&click=ca77rh&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Live%20WOTD%20Recurring%202018-03-28&utm_term=wordoftheday
Where’s Simon Rattle?
Nothing has really changed. El Sistema has always been a political project. Before Delcy Rodriguez, Jesse Chacón – another high-ranking politician – was on the board of directors for 4 years. El Sistema has operated out of the President’s Office since 2011.
The whole story that the rest of the world has known since 2007 – the massive expansion, the vast expenditure, the language of social inclusion, the colourful jackets – were all the result of a close alliance between Abreu and Chávez going back to the start of the latter’s presidency.
El Sistema is currently constructing a new HQ that was costed at $437.5 million dollars back in 2010. Meanwhile, according to a recent Guardian article, less than 10% of operating theatres, emergency rooms and intensive care units in Venezuela’s hospitals are fully operational. It’s hardly surprising that the government would want representation on El Sistema’s board of directors in return for that sort of special treatment.
So ironic for “The Guardian” to be writing about this; one of the chief cheerleaders for Chavez-style ‘socialism’ and the ‘good’ it was doing for Venezuela. Now, like Pontius Pilate, it wants to wash its hand of the ‘regime’. Uh uh, no deal.
What does “no deal” mean?
The full quote:
“According to the Venezuelan Health Observatory, a research centre at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, estimates that less than 10% of operating theatres, emergency rooms and intensive care units are fully operational. It says 76% of hospitals suffer from scarcity of medicines, 81% lack surgical materials and 70% complain of intermittent water supply.”
The Guardian is neither here nor there.