CONVENTION FOR THE SAFEGUARDING
OF THE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMITTEE FOR THE
SAFEGUARDING OF THE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Seventh session

Paris

December 2012

Periodic report no. 00798/Mexico

Report on the implementation of the Convention and on the status of elements inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

A. / Cover Sheet
A.1. / State submitting this report
States non party to the Convention reporting on an element incorporated on the Representative List should indicate the name of the State and mention ‘State non party to the Convention’.
Mexico
A.2. / Date of deposit of the instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession
This information is available online at
14/12/2005
A.3. / Elements inscribed on the Urgent Safeguarding List, if any
Please list all the elements from your country inscribed on the Urgent Safeguarding List, together with the year of inscription; for multinational elements, please indicate the other States concerned.
Not applicable
A.4. / Elements inscribed on the Representative List, if any
Please list all the elements from your country inscribed on the Representative List, together with the year of inscription; for multinational elements, please indicate the other States concerned.
The Indigenous Festivity dedicated to the Dead (2008)
Places of memory and living traditions of the Otomí-Chichimecas people of Tolimán: the Peña de Bernal, guardian of a sacred territory (2009)
Ritual ceremony of the Voladores (2009)
Parachicos in the traditional January feast of Chiapa de Corzo (2010)
Pirekua, traditional song of the P’urhépecha (2010)
Traditional Mexican cuisine - ancestral, ongoing community culture, the Michoacán paradigm (2010)
A.5. / Programmes, projects or activities selected as best reflecting the principles and objectives of the Convention, if any
Please list all the programmes, projects or activities from your country selected by the Committee for promotion under Article 18, together with the year of selection; for multinational programmes, please indicate the other States concerned.
Not applicable
A.6. / Executive summary of the report
Please provide an executive summary of the report that will allow general readers to understand the overall status of measures taken at the national level to implement the Convention.
Not to exceed 500 words.
Six years after the Mexican State ratified the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, diverse measures have been taken for its implementation at both local and international level.
For example, locally, inter-institutional work has been done combining the efforts of all the departments of the federal Government that in some way have among their competitions issues related to the intangible cultural heritage, with the aim of shaping the legal and practical framework for its adequate treatment in terms of its institutional and community management. As for participation and community consent, and according to the nature and dynamics of each cultural manifestation that to the date has been registered, work has been done based on previous anthropological research developed by academics and experts from instances such as the National Institute of Anthropology and History and other departments of the National Council for the Culture and Arts, for more than thirty years ago. This has allowed encouraging at least two processes of communitarian participation: the creation of Communitarian or ritual councils –for the case of cultural elements whose bearers are clearly identified- and the scheme of Communitarian Declarations, applied to cases in which have detected a large number of bearers and practitioners.
At international level, the work for implementation of the Convention has resulted in five nominations for the Representative List and one more that is in process of evaluation. The subsequent achievement of these six nominations, joined to a proclamation of a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage in 2003, has provided the opportunity to raise awareness at local level on the importance of the ICH in the development of a cultural national identity, as a factor of social cohesion and as an unquestionable motor of social development for the practitioner and bearer communities, all from a perspective of respect for cultural diversity and promotion of human creativity, as it will be shown along the six particular reports of the elements inscribed in the Representative List.
On the other hand, bilateral and multilateral cooperation of Mexico has been fostered, especially in the regional environment of Latin America and the Caribbean. Workshops and advising activities in topics related with mechanisms of safeguarding of the ICH have been taken to end, preparation of nomination files to the Representative List and international meetings on the implementation of the Convention.
B. / Measures taken to implement the Convention
Throughout part B below, ‘measures’ refers to the appropriate legal, technical, administrative and financial measures undertaken by the State, or fostered by the State and undertaken by civil society, including communities, groups and, where appropriate, individuals. The State should describe, wherever relevant, its efforts to ensure the widest possible participation of communities, groups and, where appropriate, individuals that create, maintain and transmit intangible cultural heritage, and to involve them actively in its management (Article 15 of the Convention).
B.1. / Institutional capacities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage
Report on the measures to strengthen institutional capacities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, as described in Article 13 of the Convention and paragraph 99 of the Operational Directives.
B.1a / Competent bodies for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage
Each State shall ‘designate or establish one or more competent bodies for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage present in its territory’ (Article 13). Please identify such a body or bodies and provide complete contact information.
After the Mexican State ratified the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the UNESCO in December of 2005, issues related to the implementation of the Convention were treated comprehensively in the academic and institutional levels of the cultural field of our country.
Following are shown the goals and objectives of the different institutions that in their work scope include diverse aspects of the Intangible Cultural Heritage:
National Council for the Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA)
Created in 1988, CONACULTA is the more relevant Mexican governmental institution in the cultural and artistic sectors , responsible of the formulation and development of the public cultural policies in Mexico and the coordinator of more than 35 specialized entities devoted to the promotion of the culture and the arts and the protection and promotion of the cultural heritage in the country.
This institution is in charge of coordinating activities of the different public instances responsible for preserving in an integral way the cultural heritage of Mexico in the diverse artistic and cultural manifestations, as well as to stimulate the programs guided to their creation, development and diffusion. Its actions are focused to maintain a professional commitment that benefits the entire Mexican society with the promotion and diffusion of the cultural and artistic sector, considering that the State should promote and diffuse the heritage and the national identity.
National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)
This institution has faculties to regulate and rule the protection and conservation of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It is to the vanguard thanks to its excellence level in research and in the formation of professionals in the field since 1939.
Its activities have high social impact, because together with the different government levels and society participates in the decision making for the conservation and knowledge of the heritage, and of the national memory.
The (INAH) is the federal government's organism created to guarantee the research, conservation, protection and diffusion of the prehistoric, archaeological, anthropological, historical and paleontological heritage of Mexico. Its creation has been fundamental to preserve our cultural heritage.
Academic research is a fundamental task, in which more than 800 academics collaborate in the areas of history, social anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, ethnohistory, ethnology, physical anthropology, architecture and conservation of the heritage and its restoration.
The academic and research works are supplemented with the formation of professionals in the higher schools of the Institute such as the National School of Anthropology and History, with headquarters in Mexico City, and the School of Anthropology of the North of Mexico, in Chihuahua, as well as the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography Manuel del Castillo Negrete, located in the capital of the Republic.
Likewise, the INAH integrates a group of documental wealth, such as the National Library of Anthropology and History that gathers the greatest collection of publications of historical and anthropological character in Mexico, besides preserving documental funds and codices of historical importance.
There is also a National System of Photographic libraries composed by 17 centres distributed along the country and that as a whole keep an iconographical wealth; the Sound Archive is devoted to the registration and the conservation of testimonies of musical tradition.
National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA)
Its mission is to preserve and to diffuse the national heritage, to promote the creation of the arts, and to foster the education and artistic research, with the participation of the three government levels and the society to improve the quality of life of the Mexicans.
It is the national organism responsible for the diffusion and promotion of the arts, the education and artistic research, as well as for the preservation of the movable and immovable heritage of the 20th and 21st centuries, tasks derived from the reflection, innovation and recognition of the artistic and cultural expressions of Mexico and the world, in a context of globalization of the culture, and search of innovative formulas to encourage the enjoyment, meditation and learning of the arts, from the traditional to the most avant-garde.
Its general objective is to foment, stimulate, create, promote and investigate the fine arts in the fields of music, plastic arts, dramatic arts and dance, literature in all its genders and architecture. It organizes and develops the professional education in all the branches of the arts and of the artistic contents of the general education that is taught in the preschool, elementary, second teaching and teacher’s teaching centres.
Likewise, it seeks to look after the preservation of the national artistic heritage through the invigoration and updating of the mechanisms for cataloguing, registration, conservation, protection and restoration, in terms of regulation, techniques and management. It seeks to strengthen the diffusion, promotion and development of the artistic creation through the offer of programs and integral services of quality, articulated, plural and balanced that favor the approach and awareness between wider sectors of the society, to achieve generating new publics.
General Direction of Popular Cultures (DGCP)
The General Direction of Popular Cultures has promoted for over 30 years the study, conservation, diffusion and development of the popular and indigenous cultures of Mexico. Its objective is to foster the preservation and the diffusion of the popular, urban, rural and indigenous expressions.
Its mission is to contribute to the creation of the social and institutional conditions that facilitate the respectful and harmonic intercultural dialogue, in which all the wealth and cultural diversity of Mexico is expressed.
The vision that supports its work is that of a country of intercultural relations based on the dialogue, in the value that has the diversity of its communities and in the invigoration of its cultural heritage; a country that fully recognizes and respects the cultural and ethnic differences of its members; a country that works so that discrimination disappears.
To fulfill its objectives, this governmental institution counts on fundamental spaces such as the National Museum of Popular Cultures, the Alberto Beltrán Centre of Information and Documentation, and 20 regional units of Popular Cultures located in the states of Baja California, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos, Nuevo León, Oaxaca (3), Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Veracruz (3) and Yucatán.
Also, through its diverse departments it develops and operates the Program for the Integral Development of the Cultures of the Indigenous Peoples and Communities (PRODICI), which assists the indigenous population, bearer of cultural and artistic expressions that are fundamental part of our diversity.
In addition, it coordinates the National Program of Popular Arts, whose objective is to promote and to accompany processes of production, preservation, invigoration, promotion and diffusion of this cultural manifestation, starting from the contemporary concepts of preservation and safeguarding of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
National Commission for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples (CDI)
This institution rules the federal public policies for the development and preservation of the indigenous peoples and communities; it veils that these guarantee the respect to their cultures, the validity of their rights and the achievement of a full life.
After the proposals of indigenous representatives, expressed in processes of consultation, as well as within the institutional framework that recognizes the priorities pointed out by them, CDI defines the development with identity for the indigenous peoples and the communities, as the objective around which must articulate the efforts of the departments and entities of all the institutions of the different government levels and of all the social actors.
In search to harmonize the national legal framework with the indigenous collective rights consecrated in the Political Constitution of the Mexican United States and the international instruments adopted by Mexico, CDI works in the elaboration of legal opinions to support the legislative work in the federal and state environments. It also coordinates with public institutions in charge of the administration and justice procurement, to promote the respect and the defense of the indigenous population's human rights and supports the invigoration of capacities as regards indigenous rights.
It promotes as one of its basic principles to include the gender focus in the programs and actions that it develops, in order to revert the biggest disadvantage and backwardness that the indigenous women live today due to their condition of gender, class and ethnic group.
Through programs, projects and actions, the CDI promotes the assessment and respect of the cultures and indigenous languages of the country, as fundamental element to build an intercultural dialogue and with it contribute to eliminate the discrimination toward the indigenous population. Before such a challenge, actions are carried out for the invigoration of the tangible and intangible heritage of the indigenous cultures and for the diffusion of the cultural diversity and linguistics of the country in the mass media.
Coordinated actions are undertaken to strengthen the health system that considers the traditional medicine and even models of attention with an intercultural focus. The improvement of the quality and coverage of bilingual basic education, middle higher education and higher in indigenous regions is promoted.
National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI)
Sustained in the multicultural and multilingual nature of the Mexican nation, this institute contributes to the consolidation of an equal society, including and plural that favors the intercultural dialogue, through advising provided to the three government levels (federal, state and municipal) in order to articulate public policies concerning indigenous languages, to promote multilingualism, the full exercise of the linguistic rights, as well as the development of the indigenous languages. Likewise, it encourages the use of the indigenous languages in all the fields of the social, economic, labor, political, cultural and religious life, mainly in those in which indigenous peoples participate. It favors the knowledge and enjoyment of the linguistic wealth recognizing the cultural diversity through the coordinated work with the indigenous communities, with different government instances, as well as with the private sector.
The INALI also carries out and promotes basic and applied research to increase knowledge on the diversity and assessment of the national indigenous languages; it fosters the diffusion of this knowledge. Likewise supports the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information Technology in the design of the methodology for the sociolinguist census that allows knowing, among other things, the number and distribution of indigenous languages speakers. It participates in the elaboration and promotes the production of grammarians, the standardization of writings and the promotion of reading and writing in the national indigenous languages.
Of equal way, it promotes and supports the creation and operation of Institutes of indigenous languages in the states and municipalities, according to the applicable laws of the federative entities and according to the presence of the national indigenous languages in the respective territories. INALI establishes the regulations and proposes programs to certify and to credit technicians and bilingual professionals, experts on the indigenous cultures; it celebrates agreements with particulars or moral people and with public or private, national, international or foreign organisms, with attachment to the activities characteristic of the Institute and the applicable regulations. It provides information to the three government levels on the application of the contents of the Political Constitution of Mexico in terms of indigenous languages, the international treaties ratified by the country and the General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, and it recommends the suitable measures to guarantee the presence and the development of the native languages.
Now then, it is starting from the work of the mentioned institutions that constituted the work of the National Commission for the Intangible Cultural Heritage, which, having adopted this name in December of 2010, seeks to join efforts for the development and follow up of the national policies around the topic, conceived as a priority within the public policies that recognize the ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as the capacity of our country to recognize itself in its identities and memory.