Banking on culture: through its small grants program, the inter-American development bank cultural center is investing in projects within the Americas that will yield immeasurable returns.
While Latin America's pop stars, painters, and Nobel novelists have turned the region into a cultural superpower, making it a land of arts icons known and loved around the world, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has been sustaining culture--in the broadest sense of the word--in communities throughout the region. It does so with the cultural grants program of the IDB Cultural Center.Where does this leave Abdon Punzo-Angel? In a dusty, smoky workshop in Michoacan, Mexico, he removes a disc of glowing copper from a charcoal furnace. He lays it on an anvil and begins hammering the metal into what will be an exquisitely proportioned vase.
Punzo-Angel is part of Latin America's cultural tapestry. So is Rosalinda Tay Mendoza, a weaver on the shore of Guatemala's Lake Atitlan, Mario Mejia, a charango maker in Bolivia, and Francisca Nazare de Oliveira, who creates "Amazonian biojewelry" in her tiny house in Brazil's rainforest.
Artist Felix Angel is part of the tapestry as well, but in ways that aren't immediately apparent when you drop by his office in Washington, DC, where he directs the IDB Cultural Center and its cultural grants program. Visitors pass through a gauntlet of security checks then enter a vast atrium where water cascades down a series of marble pools. In the elevator, a group of employees murmur in the language of finance.
Where does the IDB Cultural Center fit in this world of development banking? What does Felix Angel contribute at an institution responsible for lending upwards of US$8 billion annually for economic and social development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean?
When Angel joined the IDB seventeen years ago, most development experts thought of art as something to hang in an executive office. Their job was to finance infrastructure--building roads, water systems, and energy projects. But they soon learned that new societies are not built of concrete and steel alone. People and their ideas, and even their dreams, are just as important. It would only be a matter of time before culture--stripped of its elitist veneer--would take its rightful role in the development matrix. For one thing, culture is jobs. "It is how millions of everyday people across the hemisphere put food on the table and a roof over their heads. It's how they send their children to school," says Angel.
The Cultural Center's grant program was created in 1994 and has evolved and grown since then. In 26 countries of the region, the IDB has partnered with community based institutions and awarded small grants that provide financial support and attest to the hard work and dedication of those institutions.
Culture is the energy and the glue that helps make development possible. By knitting together communities and empowering individuals, culture helps to create the social capital needed to drive economic and social development. "Culture has to do with every aspect of people's lives, with every aspect of society," says Angel, in an interview where he is joined by Elba Agusti, a Cultural Center staff member and the manager of the Cultural Development Program. "This is the theory, but the only way to truly understand how it works is by going to the grassroots, to the region's towns and cities."
It's a Sunday afternoon in the town of Alegria, some 86 miles from El Salvador's capital of San Salvador. A group of young people crowd around a tear-shaped balloon, finely crafted from delicate paper stretched over a wire frame. Three girls hold it steady while a boy lies on his back to light the burner that will heat the air inside.
The girls let go, and the balloon soars high above the white-washed buildings of this village whose name translates into "happiness." A breeze carries it over outlying communities, coffee plantations, natural areas, and an emerald lake.
It was September 2007, and throngs of local people and tourists had gathered for Alegria's Day of Culture and Tourism. They tapped their toes to the music of the regimental band and admired local handicraft displays. They applauded as the Queen of Tourism received her crown and bought the ornamental plants, coffee, and honey for which the region is famous. They laughed at the clowns.
The hot air balloons were a particularly welcome sight because the tradition of making them had nearly died out. But some asked: Why was one of the balloons painted with the blue and white seal of the Inter-American Development Bank? The answer was that the balloons, the festival, and a whole series of changes taking place in Alegria had been sparked with the help of a grant from that institution. Tourism numbers were already on the rise. The people of Alegria clearly knew how to harness culture to the cause of economic development. This is no surprise for Angel. "Nowadays, development experts ask the people what they need," he says. "It's not like before, when they told people what to do." And so, as with the IDB's other operations, cultural development projects are born in the countries, not in Washington.
The IDB's 26 country offices in Latin America and the Caribbean publicize the program, and local IDB staff make an initial selection of the projects as they come in. After the Cultural Center Selection Committee chooses the final 40 projects, the recipients are given guidance on the efficient use of the funds and must provide certified documentation. Then the country offices start the process of disbursing the grant money--typically between $4,000 and $8,000. Angel gives credit to his country office colleagues for much of the program's success. "They are our advisors," he says. "They know the country and its people."
In Asuncion, Paraguay, IDB cultural collaborator Marta Maldonado de Corvalan talks about projects with affection due to the positive changes and the sense of pride she has seen achieved by communities over and over again. She describes one project in southern Paraguay, a region where the young people have long crossed the Parana River to listen to Argentine bands play Argentine music. With the help of a Cultural Center grant, some of these same young people learned to perform their own traditional music. "They dressed up in costumes, loaded their instruments on two boats, and once again crossed the river," she said, "but this time to show off their own music."
In the north, in the vast Chato region, most children have never seen a musical performance, or even an actual clarinet or a saxophone. But thanks to a donation of instruments and a cultural development grant for lessons, many have now made music part of their own lives. "We look for innovative projects," Maldonado says. "That is, innovative for the people. If people have no access to books, a library is totally new."
Maldonado loves these projects. But what does her boss, the IDB's Paraguay representative, think about his staff member spending valuable time on small grants? "It's not the size of the project that matters, but the difference the project makes for people," says Vladimir Radovic. "The cultural projects are important on the margin. They do things that matter," he says, such as help to strengthen the public perception of local officials and foster community participation.
The cultural projects also help the IDB build a relationship with the country. "They give us another way to get close to communities," says Juan Jose Taccone, IDB representative in Montevideo, Uruguay. "In the Department of Salto, when we talk with the authorities about possible future IDB lending operations, the conversation begins with a small project to refurbish a local auditorium and museum."
The IDB is a bank that prides itself on being more than a bank, and its small cultural development grants support and celebrate cultural diversity. For example, in Ecuador's capital of Quito, children learn to run foot races in pairs while holding tomatoes pressed between their foreheads.
"They're usually soft tomatoes," says Maria Agusta Montalvo, education director at Quito's Itchimbia Park. This project, financed with the help of a IDB Cultural Center grant, introduces children to the games that their parents and grandparents played. They learn how to spin a wooden top. They explore the mysteries of marbles. They lob wooden discs at a colorfully painted board, hoping to land one in the mouth of a wooden toad.
Itchimbia Park was formerly a garbage dump and a site for squatter settlements. Now it provides a natural counterpart to Quito's historic center, itself an IDB-financed project. The park's nursery grows over 40 species of traditional plants, shrubs, and trees, which attract numerous species of birds and mammals, including opossums and armadillos.
The development projects of the IDB Cultural Center mirror the region's extraordinary diversity. "Each is the product of geography, of particular traditions, identities, and environments," says Angel. "Our job is to work with each one individually: one country, one village, one project at a time."
For the teachers and students of the "Huaycan" and "Puruchuco" schools in a shantytown on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, geography means sitting on top of an ancient burial site. "Everywhere you go in Peru objects can be found," says the Cultural Center's Elba Agusti, who recently visited the schools. "Everyone here is proud of their pre-Columbian cultural heritage and fanatical about archaeology," she says, including these children who have an archeological site for a playground.
Puruchuco-Huaquerones is one of largest pre-Hispanic cemeteries in the country. Archeologists have recovered over 120 mummies from the bone-dry soil under the school alone. But no walls protect the ancient structures, and when people dig into the ground, they find pottery shards and other artifacts. It could have been a recipe for trouble. But the community and its school and the archeologists have learned to live together. The school even keeps a collection of 500 years old archeological pieces. For the children, the site has become a source of inspiration and knowledge, thanks to the dedication of four local teachers, Percy Salinas, Fernando Risco, Yolanda Alvan, and Victoria Saez, and the help of a Cultural Center grant. "The teachers see the Cultural Center grant as an acknowledgement of their hard work and dedication to the protection of their vast cultural heritage," says Agusti.
The past also lives on in Panama's Chiriqui Province. There, under the watchful eye of archeologist Luz Graciela Joly, a girl tosses a coin onto a board titled "Road of Rock Art," and smiles as it lands on a space that reads "Photograph a rock art stone." She moves ahead three spaces. But the boy whose turn is next drops his coin on a space that reads, "Move a rock art stone," and he loses his turn. As a prize, the winner chooses to be "tattooed" with the juice of the jagua fruit, just like the ancient warriors.
Using a Cultural Center grant, Joly and her colleagues, the Strategic Alliance for the Conservation and Promotion of Cultural and Historic Tourism between the University of Santa Maria La Antigua and the Autonomous University de Chiriqui, are teaching children about these ancient inscriptions while working to save them. In addition to the games and educational programs, they are creating a rock art interpretative center and planning shelters for four rock art sites. Proceeds from the sale of their book about rock art in Panama are used to buy materials for educational workshops.
This region of steep hills and lush valleys was once populated with people who used the dark volcanic stones as canvases on which to etch their dreams and musings. "Rock art is a legacy of human cultural evolution, the product of beings capable of creating symbols that represent different aspects of human life on the earth," says Joly.
While some children learn to interpret ancient cultures, the indigenous Wayuu people on Colombia's Guajira Peninsula are working to protect their own handicraft, oral, and dance traditions from the onslaughts of global culture.
"Traditions cannot survive if they are stuck in time. They must change," says Harold Uriana of the Kootirrawa Foundation, which received a Cultural Center grant for the courses. They must also turn profits, he added. "Tourists come here to attend the dances and the story telling," he says, "and then buy hammocks and bags and other handicrafts."
In Kootirrawa's courses, the elders share their storehouse of oral traditions while the young teach handicrafts and other subjects. All gain self-esteem that comes from having pride in one's identity, says Uriana. The Colombian government itself has labeled Kootirrawa a national model. "It's a little project," concedes Uriana. "But we get lots of support."
The arts have the power to change the way people think and how they experience the world around them. This is true, for example, in Batahola Norte, in Nicaragua's capital of Managua. Batahola is clearly a poor neighborhood, but it is also unique. Shortly after the settlement was founded in 1981, a cultural center was established to offer residents a window to a larger world. An IDB Cultural Center grant, along with other support, is now helping the center take the power of the arts to local schools.
Even in wealthy communities, school teachers and administrators often relegate arts education to second class status behind the "academic" subjects. But not in Batahola Norte. There, not just students, but public school teachers have learned to embrace the arts, according to Jennifer Marshall, the center's general coordinator.
Surrounded by colorful murals, some 100 young people at a time take classes in music, dance, theater, and painting. Then they go to schools to pass their knowledge on to another 600-800 students. In the process, they open the teachers' eyes as well. A group of teachers attend classes at the foundation to gain additional skills.
The students also learn critical life lessons. "If you are in a music group, you quickly find out that what you do is important to others," says Marshall, "and what they do is important to you." Some Batahola Norte alumni have gone on to make the arts their life's work. Others have become computer engineers, journalists, and nurses.
"It's all about being proud," says Marshall. Her projeet and hundreds of others are helping people to stand taller and imagine a new future, often while improving incomes. Particularly for the poor, culture is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Over time, their creative energy and their flights of imagination win prove to be the region's hardest currency.
Reflecting on the history of the Cultural Center's small grants program, Felix Angel emphasizes the essential process. "When we award a small grant, we give more than money; we offer advice, guidance, the management expertise of the Bank, and even moral support. We build partnerships."
Roger Hamilton is a journalist who reports on social, economic, and environmental issues in Latin America. All images are courtesy of the IDB Cultural Center.
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