Last Thursday, May 8, the César Manrique Foundation hosted the presentation of the book-catalog Word and Commitment: The Power is Made Uncomfortable. César Manrique. ACTIVISM, a work that explores César Manrique's activist side linked to the protection of the territory and the environment. The work contains fragments and press clippings, manifestos and critical texts on Manrique's work and the situation on the Island. First, the director of the César Manrique Foundation, Fernando Gómez Aguilera, spoke first to explain the birth of this project.
Gómez Aguilera recalled that the book was born from the exhibition that was inaugurated in the José Saramago room during the centenary of César Manrique and that it "is part of a broader research project that consists of proposing a critical reset of the work and personality of César Manrique." A review "to understand the artist from other perspectives than the conventional ones", located in "what is not considered art, but which displays enormous social energies".
In the case of César Manrique, his behaviors, his actions, in which he showed himself as a novel, complex and controversial artist. The book reflects his eco-social and eco-political dimension "which must be vindicated for the extraordinary contextual value it has in our time." Through his statements, César appears as "a great educator of the mentality".
These statements are related to his Lanzarote project and always in a double direction: on the one hand utopia and on the other dystopia. On the one hand topophilia and on the other solastalgia: love for his land and pain for its degradation. "He is an artist of proactive intervention through his great works but at the same time a critical artist who raises his voice and influences the transformation of society", first with success and then with failure.
The book tries to recover César Manrique's pioneering testimony on the territorial and environmental crisis of the island and the Canary Islands, to value the pioneering relevance of his social ecology, in addition to serving as an antidote against attempts or pretensions to mystify his uncomfortable ideas that do not fit well with tourism promotion.
Manrique defended a limited tourism, of cultural quality, also compatible with the lives of citizens. He rejected developmentalism, real estate speculation, overcrowding, loss of quality of life or heritage deterioration. He defended that the territory is not a commodity, but a social heritage, and understood that progress is what improves and socializes well-being. "If we fail ecologically - he stated - there is no possibility of progress, not without equity either".
He compared Manrique's approach with the paradigm of care proposed by the Colombian philosopher and pedagogue Bernardo Toro, who suggests, as an alternative to the power of success and accumulation, the paradigm of care in the field of social, political and social relations: taking care of oneself, of others and of the planet. "Toro proposes that we change the chip of our intelligence, from being a competitive intelligence to an altruistic, cooperative intelligence," Aguilera pointed out. "Intelligence today consists not in knowing a lot, but in knowing how to accompany and in knowing how to ask for help. The demonstration on May 18 consists of that: an act in which many people are going to ask each other for help to help the islands and to help us," he said.
He concluded by pointing out that "the globalized tourist turbo-capitalism in which we live produces effects and distortions, which brings us wealth, but which brings us a lot of poverty" and opted for balance, which is what Manrique asked for, who, despite the collective failure, continues to show today "an extraordinary capital of knowledge and a very valuable heritage to face the future" of the islands, which "need to re-found a model of the future based on the culture of limits and on a new governance away from corruption, bad practices, bad decisions and an economy focused on the well-being of people".
Table
Later, a video by Miguel G. Morales was shown with images and words by César Manrique about urban overcrowding, and after that the round table began, coordinated by journalists Saúl García and Andrea Domínguez, a journalist from La Voz.
The journalist Natalia G. Vargas started, who pointed out that "it is essential that the media commit to dedicating resources to denounce those things that are done irregularly, provide context and try to dismantle the hoaxes and smokescreens that are generated around tourist overcrowding." She recalled that "it is said that we live from tourism" but a third of the population lives at risk of social exclusion and acknowledged that there are bad examples of journalism "but there are many people who are betting on people knowing how important it is to take care of the environment and put fundamental rights and nature at the center of information".
The documentary filmmaker Felipe Ravina assured that "in terms of endemisms we can compare ourselves with Galápagos, what happens is that in Galápagos it has been prioritized to protect the islands and here it has been prioritized to destroy them." He said that Tenerife "is the example of what not to do" because the island is collapsed and despite this several projects that degrade the territory are maintained, such as the expansion of the port of Los Cristianos or the Cuna del Alma urbanization, "with very clear indications of corruption." He also provided "a rather worrying fact", such as that "more sperm whales are dying from collisions with large boats than the calves that are being born".
Jaime Coello, president of the Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Foundation, quoted some verses by Pedro García Cabrera: some labor orchards have miscarried/some square meters of cement. He said that "red carpet is put" for foreign businessmen for projects that degrade the territory: "a true colonization of capital." He denounced that there are problems in La Gomera for a person to read a manifesto on 18-M "because whoever runs the island, whose name is Casimiro Curbelo, is saying that if someone speaks, they will live the consequences".
Alfredo Díaz, from the pedagogical department of the FCM, pointed out that "César did a spectacular social magisterium" and understood the singularity of Lanzarote. "He thought that an arid landscape does not have to be ugly, that a landscape burned and calcined by volcanoes does not have to be denigrated." And on that singularity and its protection he created something new. "What we are losing are those unique values," he said, and pointed out that the great challenge is to preserve the value of that singularity.
For her part, Irma Ferrer, a lawyer for Urban Transparency, said, regarding the evolution of corruption, that "even the same characters." "Playa Blanca was divided between four businessmen. We are the ones who have sold our island with a complicit silence, which in a mafia state like the one we live in is called omertà," she said. To this we must add "the apathy and disinterest typical of poorly trained cacique societies, who went from camel to Mercedes." She compared it with the current situation with vacation homes, which "they call in a very funny way the democratization of tourism".
Coello pointed out that "we lack a culture of the territory, precisely what César tried to transmit" and that the basis is in education. "We have a duty to train the entire population of the Canary Islands on these values," he said, and vindicated the Moratorium and the acquisition of land for its declassification. "If there is money to pay for concerts, how much money can there be to pay for the recovery of certain spaces? It is not wasting public money, it is reconquering something that is public and returning it to society".
Díaz recalled that César always said that a people without education is condemned to ruin "and the ruin is already here, it is time to stop, there is no other." He opted for education and action "with citizens who are capable of going out into the street." "Saramago said that we were witnessing the second death of César, maybe we are witnessing now possibly the third".
Ferrer concluded by pointing out that "we have come this far because we are governed by a bunch of intellectual indigents" and said that we cannot continue promoting tourism. "In the Canary Islands, tourism is no longer the industry that is going to feed us, it is the one that is going to kill us," she said.
Andrea Domínguez concluded by assuring that the island is collapsed but despite everything "César managed to see the beauty and make us see it to others." Both the César Manrique Foundation and the speakers at the table invited those present to attend the demonstration on May 18 in Arrecife, which will be repeated on all the islands against overcrowding and that under the slogan 'Canary Islands has a limit'.
