Intervene in history

In June and July 2018, the festival was held on the National Mall in Washington DC, between the Capitol and the monument dedicated to the first American president. Catalonia: tradition and creativity from the Mediterranean, promoted and produced by the Ministry of Culture but also by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. A year ago, preparations were underway just months before the October 1 referendum, and the nervousness of the Spanish embassy in the U.S. was evident: explanatory letters, demands for justification of budgets, interventions at every public event... These were extremely tense times, as the Smithsonian Foundation's own curator, Michael Att, knows.they are building human towers for democracy", he wrote), but the festival's celebration was impeccable. An exhibition of castles, sardanas, giants and big-heads, cultural enterprises, musical performances, and a long etcetera. But along the route of stops on the grass were the buildings of the National Museum of History and Culture, Air and Space, and the National Museum of the American Indian, all of them (and others) promoted by the Smithsonian Foundation, and all of them now the subject of discursive revision by Donald Trump.

The American president is a man who knows the importance of symbols: his (capricious and tacky) intervention in the White House in faith, with gilded additions and the adaptation of the lawn to stiletto heels, or with the relocation of the portraits of recent presidents in less visible places. Now his endeavor is to intervene in the discourse of the Smithsonian museums, an institution of the highest prestige among Americans and in the international academic and museographic world, because he believes that they convey messages too wokeHe has ordered a review of all content to "eliminate divisive or partisan narratives and restore trust in our cultural institutions," which he exemplified with an example on social media: stop talking so much about slavery and the plight of the oppressed. In the same vein as he has threatened to cut universities if they don't adapt to his vision of the United States, national museums must now ask themselves if they aren't exaggerating the country's original sin. And maintaining their 53% funding will depend on it. The problem is that it's impossible to explain the American Civil War without this chapter, or the origin of the continent without a broad reference to the Indian or Native American nation (and its genocide).

This also has to do with next year's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the country's founding, a history that must evidently seem heroic, full of pride, and significantly white. We must "restore truth and common sense to the history of the United States," the order states. It's as if the Museum of the History of Catalonia were to hide the sections that refer to colonialism or slavery in Cuba, or the collaboration of some Catalans with Franco. Our museum should have an even larger permanent section dedicated to October 1st, which is both an element of pride and of dashed hopes, without any problem. Displaying achievements and mistakes, commemorating defeats and victories, not only brings us closer to the truth but also constitutes the only way to learn and improve. Hiding American slavery is not Americanism but anti-Americanism: you cannot escape your essence, what you are, your own journey. You must proudly display, yes, failures and mistakes. And above all, minorities as well. But this latter point is no longer a matter of history, but rather a matter of democratic sense and respect for the rights and voices of collectives, as the Smithsonian knows perfectly well.

September 11th is approaching (Catalan defeat and American tragedy), and at this time, the speaker of the Catalan Parliament is planning to install a large flagpole next to the institutional headquarters. The advantage of living in a country with so much history instills us with a lot of nonsense: the building was the arsenal of the shameful Ciutadella military after 1714, but later served as a barracks, a royal residence, an art museum, the seat of the Republican and regional parliaments, and also the scene of the 2017 declaration of independence. None. The next one will depend, among many other things, on our memory. On everything.