/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-VENEZUELA: State Publishing House in Crisis

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, May 20 2003 (IPS) - The Venezuelan government’s publishing house, Biblioteca Ayacucho, is passing through the worst moments of its 30-year history, without a director and with no funds to add to the 240 Latin American titles it has published.

Biblioteca Ayacucho has not yet received the money designated for its operating budget for the second half of last year, preventing it from continuing its publication schedule.

The situation prompted director Alfredo Chacón, an anthropologist and poet, to tender his resignation in mid-April. He will remain in the post until the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports names a successor.

Of the 12 titles scheduled for publication in 2002, only eight were printed and just six have been distributed to Venezuelan bookstores.

The Ayacucho crisis unfolds in the context of the troubles afflicting Venezuela’s entire cultural sector. The state agencies involved are faced with serious funding shortfalls while publishers in general saw book sales plummet 40 percent in 2002.

During the first quarter of 2003, book sales were 70 percent behind the totals for the same period in 2002, a situation booksellers blame on the country’s economic crisis (gross domestic product shrank nearly nine percent last year) and a two-month general strike.

The state-run publishing house was established in 1974, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho, in which Latin American independence hero Antonio José de Sucre, of Venezuela, defeated the Spaniards on the Peruvian battlefield.

The mission of Biblioteca Ayacucho was to revive some of the principle texts of Latin American literature and political theory, dating back to the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

"Biblioteca Ayacucho emerged as a Venezuelan state initiative when the government had strong finances, due to the high petroleum prices," literary critic Atanasio Alegre told IPS.

Venezuela is a member of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries). During the energy crisis of the 1970s, oil prices jumped four-fold, so exports by the state-run oil company PDVSA fed the public coffers.

This publishing house "has been a unique experience in the Latin American sphere because it has published the best of the classics, unlike other publishers in the region, which – because they are private – are guided more by commercial criteria," said Alegre.

"It has given new life to a wide range of authors, and the care taken in its prologues and chronologies, entrusted to true experts, has earned Ayacucho great respect and demonstrated the potential of the book industry in Latin America," he added.

From several centuries and different countries, some of the authors published by the state-run enterprise include Peruvian Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Colombian poet José Asunción Silva, Servando Teresa de Mier of Mexico, Brazil’s Silvio Romero, Venezuela’s Francisco de Miranda, Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas, Argentine Julio Cortázar, Cuba’s Alejo Carpentier and Guatemala’s Miguel Angel.

The publishing house’s director, Chacón, told IPS that "the production of an Ayacucho book is different than any other because it entails the critical re-establishment of the text and the elaboration of a chronology of the era" in which it was written.

Chacón said that when he was named director of Biblioteca Ayacucho in 2001, there was a list of 50 books to publish, of which 40 were chosen. Today there are 10 titles ready to go to print as soon as funds are available.

"Biblioteca Ayacucho was prosperous during its first 10 or 12 years. Since then it has always suffered budgetary problems. The difference is that resources were insufficient but they arrived. Now the funds never come," he said.

Alegre commented that "Biblioteca Ayacucho has no peer in Latin America. It is lamentable that it has deteriorated, because it had become a train that ran on its own tracks. The economic crisis must not destroy it. Culture should be based on ingenuity, not finances."