Breathe
By Juana Inés Dehesa
In 18th century Venice there were convents where orphan and expostulant girls were received and taught various trades, including housekeeping and music making.
I stumbled upon this fact a few days ago, while fighting to the death with a translation about Vivaldi. For many years, Vivaldi was a violin teacher in one of these convents, and this allowed him not only to practice his trade and support himself, but also to educate several generations of young people.
I bring to the conversation this fact, anecdotal only in appearance, because it came to be inserted in a precise way in the conversation on Tiempo de mujeres, the set of essays coordinated by Karina Vaquera on the situation of women in different areas of Mexican life, where I collaborated with an essay on women and culture in contemporary Mexico.
My position is very simple: culture is, at the same time, the way we human beings have found to imagine other worlds, and a productive activity that is highly undervalued. While we understand culture as what saves us, what distinguishes us, what allows us to build and beautify, we deny support to women creators and condemn them to a life of economic and labor precariousness, where exercising our trade, our work, implies renouncing to support a family.
How different this idea is from that of 18th century Venetian society. There, teaching music to girls implied giving them a trade, that is, arming them to insert themselves into a productive society. On the contrary, today, in Mexico in the 21st century, culture is something that is applauded but not paid for, and although it is said to be important, it occupies a very small place in school life.
How much better it would be for all of us if this were to change; if we understood that culture, in addition to enriching the soul and looking beautiful in museums, serves to resist and to survive, that exposure to cultural manifestations can represent for a girl the possibility of thinking differently and choosing another destiny, and that is why it is the duty of the State to procure public and educational policies that provide space and support to women creators, to exercise our work, yes, but also to teach it. Only in this way will culture serve to save us; only in this way will we be providing weapons to face the world. The rest, I am sorry to say, is demagogy.
*Juana Inés Dehesa (Mexico City, 1977) is a writer and trainer of full users of written culture. Her most recent book is Ping! ( Mexico, Océano, 2021).
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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