Open Letter to Argentine President Nestor Kirchner

February 14th, 2006

To the President of the Argentine Republic
Dr. Nйstor Kirchner

Dear Mr. President

The undersigned, artists, professors, researchers and scholars, from different corners of the world, thanks to our Argentine colleagues, have become acquainted with the critical situation which cultural institutions in Argentina are going through.

For this reason, and based on four main documents deeply committed with world culture and with a transparent and credible international scientific community, we would like to ask you to consider a new hierarchical organization of the Argentine cultural institutions (the World Music Charter, Zone Franche, 2001, www.zonefranche.com/pdf/CharteAnglais.pdf; the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, Max Planck Society, 2003, www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html; the Declaration of Bucharest about values and ethical principles, UNESCO-CEPES, 2004; www.cepes.ro/September/French/declaration.htm; and The International Researchers Charter for Knowledge Societies, IAMCR, 2005, www.petitiononline.com/iamcr/).

The facts and arguments leading us to this presentation, in solidarity with our Argentine colleagues, are motivated on a series of shortfalls, vices and symbolic violence which are publicly and globally known by simply checking several sources of information, herein quoted through multiple links, making it difficult for professionals to denounce them within the country, and are listed as follows:

Degradation of Scientific and Cultural institutions

The increasing degradation of the artistic and scientific institutions arises in part from these agencies not being hierarchically honored. This sad situation could be reverted if the artistic and scientific institutions are ennobled by giving them ministry status (like in Brazil, http://www.cultura.gov.br), submitting the appointment of its authorities to public competition with standing and independent judges, observing the periodicity of their positions, and raising the nominations to parliamentary hearings and control. Moreover, these appointments should be supervised and evaluated by continental and international auditors, without compromising national sovereignty.

Brain Drain

The anti-democratic mechanisms of appointment, evaluation, and qualification of the national artistic and scientific bodies currently in effect in Argentina and many other countries of Latin America, are feeding illegitimate situations that lead to a state of deterioration and obsolescence, detrimental to what should be modern, autonomous, competitive and meritocratic institutions.

This regrettable circumstance happens when the idea flourishes that people consume only goods and that the spiritual well being belongs exclusively to elitist minorities. It also happens when the institutions that accommodate the cultural patrimony do not invest in patterns of excellence, capability and quality; or in the search, discovery and dialogue between cultures and disciplines that could lead to true advances or innovations, and not mere imitations.

This increasing deterioration, which also disseminates into higher educational levels, causes profound uneasiness, and a cultural backwardness that encourages unrestrained brain drain. This drain does not only respond to economic motives, but essentially to cultural and symbolic ones (http://www.alternet.org/globalaffairs/13148).

Subordination to Geopolitics of Knowledge

This deterioration has nourished a cultural provincialism and an ideological subordination to a geopolitics of knowledge and culture, which undermines the incorporation of strategic fields from art, science and humanities (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/argentina/falda-del-carmen.htm), banning research and creativity as well as producing a digital regression of modern methods and techniques; all of which has further deepened the technological, scientific and humanistic prevailing gap with regard to institutions of developed countries.

Lack of Electronic Transparency

The Argentine artistic and scientific system, which survives isolated and fragmented, and whose actions have been assimilated to public administrative routines, is used to surrendering to ritual simulations of periodical artistic and scientific reports, which are neither published nor otherwise made public.

The fact that these reports remain unpublished for years might have been violating not only the principles about the publicity of official documents but also the free access paradigm of information and knowledge exchange, by preventing the local and foreign colleagues the right assigned by the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Max Planck Society, 2003)-- to ascertain electronically their intellectual quality, as well as their honesty and seriousness (http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html). Thus, it would be reasonable to assume the existence of numerous violations of ethical codes.

Obstacles to Verify Scientific Frauds

Because of lack of electronic transparency of unpublished academic production, abuse of confidential procedures and lack of appropriate mechanisms to denounce fraud --which anybody can check visiting Argentine official websites (http://www.secyt.gov.ar; http://www.cultura.gov.ar; and http://www.conicet.gov.ar/)-- evidences of scientific fakes or uncontrolled results are very difficult to detect and reveal, and therefore an external verification of Argentine public academic institutions is full of obstacles extremely hard to overcome (http://www.lafogata.org/04arg/arg8/art6.htm).

Besides the lack of electronic transparency, reports lack also linguistic or semantic transparency because they happened to be extremely hermetic to purposefully encrypt morally suspect information, often lacking abstracts written for non-specialists, as a support to the technical report, that only very few experts can follow.

Potential Artistic and Scientific Hoax

Thus, hidden behind the lack of electronic transparency and covered by an hermetic jargon and an abuse of confidentiality in administrative procedures, in an uncertain number of reports, its sources or data might have been distorted, adulterated or falsified, and its methods and conclusions do not fulfill a scientific truth or an artistic excellence.

It is also suspected that some reports might have been plagiarized, produced through evil acts and/or simply constructed out of thin air. As no system-wide control or checks and balances of these values exist, violations are prone to multiply, with even cases of fraud occurring, without its authors ever being investigated, or judicially prosecuted.

Low Ethical and Electronic Standards

Individual researchers and artists are not only morally responsible to the research and representation process selection of topics and methods, and the integrity of creativity or researchbut also to its final results. According to the Declaration of Bucharest (2004) all scholars, artists and scientists alike, should commit themselves to high ethical standards and a code of ethics based on relevant norms enshrined in international human rights instruments should be established for scientific professions. The social responsibility of artists and scientists requires that they maintain high standards of integrity and quality control, share their knowledge, communicate with the public and educate the younger generation (http://www.cepes.ro/September/French/declaration.htm.).

In that same ethical line, The International Researchers Charter for Knowledge Societies (IAMCR, 2005) established that authorities should promote open, collaborative and self-organizing publishing models and software development methods that are accessible to researchers and available in not-for-profit databases, libraries and archives; thereby supporting researchers as content producers and as active participants in the open access paradigm of knowledge creation and exchange (http://www.petitiononline.com/iamcr).

Decline in Quality in the Artistic and Scientific Competitiveness and Productivity

The jurisdictional decline in quality, the geopolitical censorship and curtailment, and the ethical and bureaucratic corrosion and decomposition create a situation in which Argentine competitiveness in the international ranks radically diminishes; local artistic creativity and scientific productivity erodes; patented innovation abroad decreases; and royalties which should accrue to national institutions simply disappears (http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52579).

Hidden Authoritarian Factionalism

All these anomalies, anachronisms and obstacles such as the institutional decline in quality, the geopolitical censorship or curtailment and the academic corruption made possible a situation in which artistic, scientific and higher educational institutions have become overwhelmed by a hidden authoritarian factionalism totally devoid of any sign of meritocracy, transparency and fair competition (http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n6/).

In its place a policy of "pulling strings" and of awards, punishments and personal vendettas; a hidden discourse of discrimination, destined to silence critical opinions and supress dissidents; and obscurantist habits inherited from different authoritarian regimes, that have cost the Argentine people, in its recent past, numerous losses of their more precious artists and scientists who disappeared in the fog of torture and extermination (http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/universidad/index-2003-11-26.html)

In this regard, the artistic, scientific and higher educational agencies should promote a creative work environment free of all kind of political, ideological, regional, racial, sexual, religious or moral harassment. According to the above mentioned international documents, these agencies should form a community where mutual trust prevail, based on the values of an open, pluralistic and democratic society.

Illegitimate Symbolic Violence

The perversions of the cultural system (devaluations, censorships and covering ups) have uncovered the phantom of an illegitimate symbolic violence, that is to say. an ideological control and the mechanisms of exclusion (discrimination, proscription, postponement and reprisal), that without producing physical death continues castrating the soul and the mind of what should be an independent intellectual community (http://quebec.indymedia.org/en/node/23503).

Feeding of Violence and the Following Institutional Devaluation

This illegitimate apparatus of symbolic violence --which hinders the dispersion of its captive clientele-- generating misconduct of different kinds (cover-ups, censorships, malfeasance and ideological falsehoods), abets the silence and consent to anachronistic superposition by state institutions; ignores the decline in quality production and the fragmentation of artistic and scientific common spaces; censors or curtails the editorial information and production; and silences the abandonment, desolation and decomposition of institutions dear to Argentine culture, such as CONICET, National Library, Colon Theatre, National Archive, National Academies, National Museums (Natural Science Bernardino Rivadavia, Miguel Lillo, Bellas Artes, etc), and National Universities (http://www.simon-bolivar.org/bolivar/un_barrio_para_ba.html).

Conclusion

The purpose of our document is to kindly request from you, as President of the Argentine people, the creation of a new and more relevant hierarchy to the Art and Science areas, incorporating and centralizing them under a presidential jurisdiction or giving them a Ministry status.

Finally, we wish to confirm that no constructive or lasting policy could be successfully implemented if in the agencies of art, science, research and higher education, practices and habits do not have their organization chart restructured in a way that would eliminate the corruption, falsifying, genuflective behavior, opportunism, moral indifference and, what is more serious and lethal, the self-censorship or fear to express oneself freely.

We remain with due respect

Yours truly,