The withdrawal of Carmen Mc Evoy’s presentation and Maria Emma Mannarelli’s epilogue from the book 200 years later. Schoolchildren ask, historians answerof the Bicentennial Special Project, by separate texts from President Dina Boluarte and the Minister of Culture, Leslie Urteaga, would have generated its first consequences, with the resignation of the director of the National Library of Peru, Boris Espezúa Salmón.
In 2020, a digital edition of this publication on the independence of Peru was made, aimed at schoolchildren, with the writings of both historians, and it was printed in 2021. This year it was reissued but without recognizing their work.
Consulted by La República, the renowned historian Carmen Mc Evoy indicated that it is “an absolute lack of respect for the intellectual work of those who preceded the current Directorate of the Bicentennial Special Project (now in charge of Percy Barranzuela, who also appears in the book).”
“It seems, due to the arrogance and shamelessness they display, that they created the universe while they dance around, literally, all over Peru, without creating any relevant content for these dire times we are living in,” he stressed.
He recounted some details that show the current management’s lack of interest in the work. “I remember very well, and I think that many of those who participated in the event can corroborate it, its current director Percy Barranzuela glued to his cell phone when José Faustino Sánchez Carrión was being honored in Huamachuco. And then he quickly left the room to not return to the main ceremony, except for the obligatory photo, in honor of the Founding Father of the Republic of Peru. Based on this anecdote, I think that The act of mutilating an organic text is a combination of ignorance, petulance and sycophancy to power that, unfortunately, has taken the so-called Ministry of Culture by storm.“, he warned.
Mc Evoy questions the arguments of the director of the Bicentennial Special Project, who will have his arguments to validate the mutilation of the texts and “incorporate the Minister of Culture and President Boluarte in a book where there is no logical reason to do so, except to bring an offering to the power of the day.”
“Moreover, the credits that appear there and that remain deceitfully, become the ‘legalistic’ weapon to dismiss not only my introduction, regarding a conceptual bet that refers to the republican pedagogy of Jorge Basadre, but also the epilogue of my colleague and notable historian María Emma Mannarelli. Because it is in the epilogue, also mutilated from the book, where Barranzuela ‘modestly’ places himself to talk about making unknown historical actors visible, when the great act of making two recognized female historians invisible, to praise his waykis, is perpetrated by him,” she told this newspaper.
What is behind this position: is it a kind of dictatorship supported by whim or is it the confluence of all the ills that afflict the country?
The historian answers: “There is no intelligence, much less mental clarity, sufficient to carry out any cultural dictatorship. A cultural dictatorship demands a certain knowledge of history and reality, and the actors who arrive in waves at the Ministry of Culture, now a sort of employment agency and fiefdom of Boluarte’s best friend, do nothing but fight to survive. That is the leitmotiv “They are the ones who are willing to do anything to achieve this. So, the danger here is not their enlightenment but their rapacious voluntarism which, due to the absence of any rational content, has plunged us into the most absolute mediocrity. For them, mutilating a book is part of their lifestyle and that, I think, is the central nerve of the tragedy that overwhelms and moves us, precisely in the year of the bicentennial in which the independence of Peru was consolidated.”
Sources consulted by La República had already warned us about the criteria that the current government is promoting in the Ministry of Culture, among other departments. “It is not about ideology, if you want to continue, you have to adjust to what Boluarte and his people say. I opposed it,” said one of the sources a couple of months ago.
As things stand, other resignations could be added to that of the director of the National Library of Peru.
