A fashion designer from Lima did not want to pay the price that an artist demanded shipibo for using a piece of your creation. Until then the issue is economic and legal. And the designer is expected to understand copyright laws as well as supply and demand.
The problem is when arguments like “cultural appropriation” appear. That is, when a group of left-wing enlightened people tries to decide who can and who cannot represent, exercise or even enjoy an artistic expression. The cultural censors manage the toll on the cultural highway and that is why they charge, whether in real capital or symbolic capital. They do not believe in inspiration, syncretism, multiculturalism or interculturality. For them, miscegenation makes people invisible and inspiration is actually cultural expropriation.
They are like the Chinese businessman who trademarked the name “capybara.” They believe that culture is a private preserve, a goose that lays golden eggs that the people of Lima should not touch; much less if they are ‘white’ and suspected of pituquería. They talk about expropriation because their relationship with cultural capital is like their relationship with capital itself. As if culture and wealth were not creative and multiplying agents. As if they were a community facing a complaint or mining concession, the guardians of culture pretend to be the ones who grant or remove the social license. Only the chosen ones can be inspired by a typical art, a traditional cultural expression or ancestral knowledge. As if all knowledge were not ancestral. They misread Arguedas and repeat that “I am not acculturated.” They denounce “cultural appropriation” while, paradoxically, they try to appropriate culture as if it were their farm.
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