Tomorrow, April 19, marks the 25th anniversary of the death of the poet Octavio Paz, who in 1990 became the only Mexican to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Great essayist, dissenting from totalitarianisms and defender of democracy; his critical opinion would be a beacon of light in the current political circumstances in which we live.
I want to share with the readers, partialities of a text that I have kept since July 24, 1979. It is a stenographic version of the magisterial conference that Paz gave, that day, at the Second World Communication Meeting, held in Acapulco , Warrior.
“The theme is television and culture. I will not talk about how television sees culture, but how culture sees television (…) The word culture is of agrarian, sedentary origin; Cultivating the land means: cultivating it, working it so that it bears fruit. Cultivating the spirit, cultivating a people, also means cultivating that spirit so that it bears fruit. (…) A culture is above all a set of things, institutions, ideas, images, used by a certain society. Man-made things, things that man has invented. For example, a chair, a cup, this microphone through which I am speaking; things that man has transformed: a piece of land, a river whose course has been rectified; things and beings that man has tamed or dominated, for example horses, atoms or electric current, that is, culture is what man uses, for example oil; and what man names, for example, a star (…)
Consequently, culture is a set of things, things that have a name, that is, it is a set of names, but it is also a set of institutions, states, churches, families, schools, unions, etc. (…) In the same way that society invents chairs, plows, locomotives and machine guns, it invents social forms, organizations, which are production and distribution structures, that is, forms of solidarity. Society invents itself by creating its institutions. (…) Man, men together, establish themselves through institutions, that is, men —humanity, transcriber’s note— establish themselves through cultures, states, nations, families, tribes, etc. ., but when the company is established it is also named and thus distinguishes itself from other companies (…)
“High culture and popular culture are moments in continuous oscillation of the relationship of the same culture. This relationship is one of opposition and affinity; sometimes there is a contradiction in extreme titles, sometimes there is an affinity of function, and this is what makes a society creative and diverse (…)
“What can culture, understood as diversity, ask of television today? We can ask him for one thing, that he be faithful to life, that is, that he be plural, that he be open. Not a television governed by a group of bureaucrats determined to reach unanimity around the boss and the doctrine, but many televisions that express the diversity and plurality of Mexican culture, the so-called high culture and popular culture (…) So, Television can be the instrument of Caesar in turn and become a means of isolation or it can be plural, diverse, popular in the true sense of the word, and then it will be a true national and universal means of communication. Years ago McLuhan said that television began the period of the Global Village, the identical universal idea everywhere. I believe exactly the opposite, I believe that history is going another way, the coming civilization will be a dialogue between national cultures or there will be no civilization, uniformity will reign and in that case everyone would have the same face, the mask of death. But I believe the opposite, I believe in diversity, I believe in plurality, that is, I believe in life”.
