This Monday, President Nicolás Maduro Moros celebrates the National Day of the Artist with the presentation of the National Culture Award 2023-2024 and the Artistic Glories Award, from the Ayacucho Hall of the Miraflores Palace, in Caracas, to outstanding Venezuelan artists.
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00:30President Raussell, Margarita Padrón, Natalia Rondón,
00:34Perala García, Humberto Matos, Zakaria García,
00:39Perala Ezequiel, and Rubén Hernández,
00:43for this extraordinary work, so difficult and complex.
00:50Greetings to the Vice President of Communication and Culture,
01:01poet Alfred Nazareth Ñáñez, known as Fred Ñáñez,
01:07to writer and dancer of Venezuelan music Ernesto Villegas.
01:20He knows because a year ago he didn't know how to dance,
01:28and a year after he's a renowned dancer.
01:33That's an achievement of the great mission,
01:35Viva Venezuela, My Beloved Homeland.
01:45Greetings to my wife, the First Lady, 2025-2031, Cilia Flores.
01:59Governors, partners, authorities, vice ministers,
02:04I want to greet in a very special way the promoters of the great mission,
02:09Viva Venezuela, Mi Padre Querida, Noel Márquez, Francisco Pacheco,
02:14Ignacio Barreto, Espe Villalba, Araceli García,
02:18Javier Marín, Amaranta Pérez, Ana Cecilia Arroyo,
02:23among others here present.
02:34I would say with this Alberto Crespo,
02:38this poet of great consciousness of our country,
02:45applause for him, this Alberto Crespo,
02:49the man that always ignited the light in times of darkness.
02:58You called this country the country of cultural diversity,
03:03of deep culture, this beautiful Venezuela that we are.
03:10You called it the absent country.
03:12Here is the absent country of yesterday
03:16and present country of today and forever.
03:19This is the country beyond.
03:27Some minutes ago we were today the day of the National Artist.
03:34Ernesto was saying that he didn't know why it's the day of the National Artist,
03:41but it is in fact the day of the National Artist and we celebrate it.
03:47Today we were saying goodbye to an artist of poetry,
03:53of sensitivity and the love for the homeland, Isaias Rodríguez.
03:59Today we said goodbye to him on behalf of millions of women
04:06who love this country, honor and glory to Isaias Rodríguez forever.
04:52Isaias Rodríguez, honor and glory, it is not time to hesitate,
04:59it is time to move forward.
05:23Let me tell you something.
05:30Last Friday today is Monday, isn't it?
05:34Last Friday we were living a historical moment,
05:42a day full of sun, bright and blessings,
05:48because barely last Friday I was sworn in on behalf of everybody
05:57from our heart, from the truth, from commitment.
06:02And I was thinking when I was handling the awards,
06:10things alive that you would say in a mysterious way, coincidence.
06:23I don't think that it was a coincidence that my first government act
06:29for the presidential term 2025-2031 is involving national culture
06:36and this powerful cultural movement.
06:39It's the first act of the government.
06:57And that marks everything, because if you hit before, you hit twice.
07:07Are you in agreement?
07:19It's vital because culture is everything.
07:23It's the expression of what we are as human beings in the first place.
07:28It's the expression of what we are as social beings
07:33and the expression of what we are as individual, creative beings, sensitive beings.
07:42All of the societies from slavery, feudalism, and capitalism
07:47in its different phases, all societies have generated
07:54the culture of the powerful people, the rich man, the elites,
08:02but deep down seeing the Teatro Negro de Barlovento,
08:10we realize that also we generate theater, music, and culture of the resistance
08:21in all humanity.
08:24But we study.
08:29I always ask for pretexts.
08:33I always give pretexts.
08:38I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but I obey what he says.
08:44You are excused, Ernesto.
08:48I'm not a chauvinist nor a false nationalist.
08:56Actually, our formation is internationalist and human.
09:01I believe in the consciousness of believers.
09:04For us, Holland is America, and I feel like an American citizen.
09:11I come from Caracas, as I am from Mexico, Brazil.
09:18To say Bolivarian is to feel part of the Bolivarian cause,
09:23and I say like José Martí, Holland is humanity.
09:26But with that universal Latin American and Caribbean consciousness,
09:29I have to say, and I don't exaggerate a little bit,
09:36and you know more about that than me,
09:42our culture is extraordinary, unique, and marvelous,
09:47and it has no comparison with anything.
09:52And it beats what some pretend to call culture in the North, the climate,
10:01and you have been the ones who made possible to rescue our identity.
10:10All of you, Jesús Sevillano, Pedro Rocio, Pacheco, Noeli, Cristobal,
10:21Lilia, Cecilia, the Guaraguá,
10:27all of you have rescued, investigating each rhythm, each lyric, each meaning,
10:35and you, in the times of the absent country, forgotten and abandoned,
10:41you were resilient with your music and made possible different times that have arrived.
10:51We need to do everything needed so that our identity and our culture,
10:57not a spiritual force, is the one that prevails.
11:06Above any difficulty.
11:12This is a cultural war, a cultural battle, a battle of values.
11:23Yes, it is.
11:25Our values are one thing that are expressed through theater, literature, poetry, music, and dance,
11:36in every manifestation, even in our look, in the way we smile and walk,
11:41we are different from them, very different.
11:44Antonio Jose, we are very different.
11:47And it's a battle that involves high consciousness and high creative capacity.
12:07They have the communication technologies,
12:13and communication technologies, they are more advanced than us,
12:22but us, with our music, our rhythm, and our values, we are more developed than them.
12:35And we need to believe in a powerful way that these years, we are celebrating 50 years of the Aquiles-Nazoa Credo.
12:52We need to celebrate it.
12:55The Aquiles-Nazoa Credo, imagine all of the children in schools saying this credo,
13:06and performing in schools the Aquiles-Nazoa Credo and singing it.
13:11Can we do it?
13:14Because the Aquiles-Nazoa Credo, I think it encompasses that power that we need to move forward
13:23and advance towards a new model of society, a new spiritual situation in our country and in humanity.
13:33It's a local battle, a regional battle, a national battle, and a global battle as well.
13:41It's a permanent battle of every day.
13:45I don't get tired to say, in the face of the anti-values of the declining and failed modernity,
13:54post-modernity and culture of the North,
14:00and their anti-values that deny the human condition and the happiness and social equality,
14:10in the face of that, the best vaccine for our children and our youth and for ourselves
14:18is to practice our culture, to vindicate our identity in each detail.
14:31How many things, for example, the 80 years of Rafael Salazar,
14:39here is this beauty he sent us.
14:44Here is the encyclopedia that he is writing.
14:56So many things that he has sent me.
15:00Here we have little horses of the city of Bolivar that just won the National Culture Award,
15:10and they are inviting me to go there.
15:13Look at this beauty.
15:18So many things.
15:21You know it better than me, much better.
15:25Everything that means and must mean from the superior consciousness of a country,
15:37subjected to a war of different forms,
15:43and one of the forms or ways it has is a cognitive or psychological war.
15:50So that we feel absent without a country,
15:55so that we feel that Venezuela is not worth it,
16:00that we are not worth it,
16:02and to try to build as they are trying to build with a lot of income from Miami,
16:09a parallel country,
16:11using the way they do everything, since they are a fraud in everything.
16:24What a shame.
16:31You can't do that.
16:36You can create something funny about the shorts of the man in the hotel.
16:52So many things can we do and we must do
16:57in order to face that what we call cognitive war, cultural war, psychological war.
17:11There are two concepts that we learn in life.
17:15From a young age, since the pro-homeland cultural front was part of the great movement,
17:25and the cultural fronts.
17:27Here we have one of the creators and founders of the cultural front pro-homeland
17:32that won today a national cultural award.
17:39With Gloria Martin, that heroine of culture, a brilliant Venezuelan songwriter.
17:47We are winning that war,
17:58but it's a strong battle of every second, every moment.
18:05We talk about the decadence of the western modernity and the decadence of the post-modernity of the western.
18:25Modernity was in decline during the 70s with a strong force
18:34and there were anti-cultural movements in the world
18:38and from those emerged what they call post-modernity theories,
18:44ideas to criticize modernity, but then led us to the worst.
18:52And with the decadence of those movements of the western,
18:58which was a hegemonic dominating the world and other communication media and cultural instruments,
19:07everything resulted in anything.
19:10So that the only option they have is fascism or neo-fascism.
19:18No one should be deceived.
19:22Behind the decline and collapse of the western and their antifascists
19:30is starting to emerge as the only alternative fascism
19:37that has powerful outbreaks in Europe.
19:42In the next weeks, the neo-Nazi forces are going to win in Germany.
19:51It's a matter of time so that in France,
19:55the currents of the extreme right, fascist currents that ruled along Hitler,
20:01return to political power.
20:04In Spain, these currents are hegemonic and dominant from parties like Vox
20:12and all of the trash of anti-values.
20:19It's a powerful battle of values.
20:27They promote what they believe is a new fascism.
20:32The same or even worse as the one we have known.
20:40500 years ago, when the European empires went to America,
20:45it was not called fascism.
20:48It was called colonialism, imperial colonialism.
20:52But all of this imperialism was even more criminal than fascism and Nazism
21:03that was criminal in the 20th century.
21:06So Venezuela, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the world
21:14need a powerful cultural revolution to vindicate the best of the human values
21:25and oppose the anti-values of the Western decadence and fascism.
21:38A cultural revolution that establishes the basis of a new modernity.
21:48From Venezuela, we say a new modernity, a socialist modernity,
21:53and a deeply humanist modernity with multiple colors and diversity
22:00that promotes optimism for humanity, that promotes joy and happiness
22:06as Bolivar would say in Angostura, the highest social happiness,
22:11the highest political stability, that promotes equality among human beings,
22:25where any kind of exploitation, war, and violence
22:31stop and promotes values of human cooperation.
22:37I always say that I admire the concept of the President of China,
22:43my oldest brother and partner of the five presidents of Xi Jinping,
22:52that since China is the greatest powerhouse that exists on earth today,
22:59they don't have imperialist nor colonialist ambitions.
23:03I think that this is the first time in humanity in several years of civilization
23:11is emerging a great power that wants development of humanity in an equal way.
23:18And President Xi Jinping talks about a concept to make humanity a community of shared destiny,
23:38which is the concept of Bolivar when he dreams about the balance of the world
23:46and in times like this, 200 years ago, he was preparing what was his dream
23:56of uniting the whole America, respecting diversity as we respect each other here.
24:04There are two concepts that we learned when we were children, when we were 15, 18 years old.
24:13I met Ernesto when I was like 20 years old. Ernesto was around 12 years old.
24:23He was the Benjamin of the Viegas-Polhap, the cars from the veredas of Coche.
24:36I met him there. He was the son of El Negro Villegas, a restless kid.
24:52In those times, we talked about transculturation and we discussed that issue
25:00and we used all of the mechanisms that reality provided us with.
25:05Nobody taught us to be revolutionaries.
25:08We learned this in practice as I have learned from the people to be a president.
25:14Perucho, you are right when you said this. I felt identified in your words.
25:21The great teacher in these years of life to learn how to be a president
25:27is the people, the humble people with their resilient capacity and their creative capacity,
25:34as your grandmother, for example.
25:39Transculturation.
25:50I'm not making up this.
25:53It is a concept of social sciences to understand the processes to which we are subjected
26:03since transculturated people is a dominated people that is breaking the concept of inventing and making mistakes.
26:20Transculturated people is a people that the only thing it does is to make mistakes since we all imitate.
26:31But there is another concept that I've been talking about and I think both complement each other
26:39and since you work with thoughts and words and the permanent debate from the capability
26:49and sensitivity of artists to create, which is the concept of deculturation.
27:01Alfred Nazare, I'm talking to you.
27:11If you deculturize and you take our cultural memory from us, our poetry and the consciousness of what we are in 500 years of fight,
27:22it's easier to transculturate us, which is change our chip and as Elon Musk wants to incorporate us a chip that thinks for us.
27:38So these processes are always in need of two components and I learned this,
27:48since he discovered me before you.
27:54Look what I have learned.
28:00It's a combination of efforts.
28:04As the pulse is resisting the pressure of those who push you to beat him
28:16and you have to resist the anti-values and the cultural decline of the empire of the north
28:27to resist full of colors, full of strength and energy
28:35and advance in the construction of new things in the creation of a new cultural spiritual revolution
28:44from the Venezuelan roots to allow to put the society of Venezuela
28:50at the doors of a new modernity, of harmony, deeply human, of a new society.
29:01To resist and make progress.
29:05Resistance itself generates values and the things we need to move forward,
29:12not only in culture but also in politics, in economics,
29:21in military, in everything.
29:28Every area of life has an art.
29:34The art of politics, the art of military and economic politics is actually an art
29:48and the art of vindicating the values and culture of a country.
29:55It's sublime to know that we have found and found again the path of vindicating what is ours.
30:10And I tell to the whole Venezuelan people, our fellow mates residing in Venezuela,
30:21the immense majority and those who emigrated by any reason and wish to be among us again,
30:30let's vindicate what is ours.
30:34And nobody should act against Venezuela.
30:41Venezuelans defend their colors, their culture, their identity, their history,
30:48their glorious history of 500 years.
30:52We are the liberators of America and nobody is going to take that away from us.
31:04So culture allows to create ties, reunite and motivate and increase consciousness.
31:17But above all, you National Culture Awards, creators of culture of Venezuela,
31:28culture allows what is the secret fact we can talk about,
31:38to build human values and patriotic values of children.
31:45Screens of our phone won't win our battle.
31:53Video games and the social network TikTok that intoxicates and kills.
32:02Those who use technologies won't win the battle.
32:09And since they entertain so much, that battle for the consciousness,
32:17that battle for the future, we need to win that battle.
32:22We have all the means to do so.
32:25We are living in beautiful times, miraculous times.
32:29I congratulate all of the artists of Venezuela.
32:34And I tell you, what is coming is very good and for the better.
32:40Long live the culture of Venezuela. Long live the Venezuelan art.
32:45Thank you very much. God bless you.
32:48Go ahead. Thank you very much.
33:33Here I am, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax.
33:41Here I am, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax.
34:03Thank you very much.
34:33Here I am, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax.
34:53Here I am, like an ax, like an ax, like an ax.