organizing committee new projects The Salvador Allende Arts Festival for Peace organizing committee is a Toronto-based cultural organization. Founded in 2003 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Chile on Sept. 11, 1973. Interview with Rodrigo Barreda Artistic Director 2003 Festival mandate Our mandate is to remember & commemorate Salvador Allende by cultivating a greater understanding and appreciation of individual and national, social and political struggles through the arts. mission • To bring Latin American cultural activity from the margins of Canadian cultural activity. •To celebrate the achievements of visual minority artists.   vision The Salvador Allende Arts Festival for Peace has been built on the following premises: • Artists can play an important role in all levels of social processes. • We believe in the possibility of social change through the reconceptualization of terms and the recuperation of the stories and histories of the marginalized.     festival organizing committee The Festival is the initiative of a group of four members of Toronto's Chilean community who share common values of social justice peace and unity. This small group constitutes the festival's organizing committee: Rodrigo Barreda: Artistic Director. Tamara Toledo: Visual Arts Coordinator.   Lautaro Fuentes: Finances - Production. Leonel Leiva: Finances - Volunteers. Interviews Tamara Toledo: Visual Arts Coordinator. Lautaro Fuentes: Finances - Production. Leonel Leiva: Finances - Volunteers. • back to top.   As the Festival develops, various partnerships and sub-committees are being created. This year a special effort is being made towards strengthening our relationship with other Chilean and Latin American community organizations, as well as including a "literary arts" component within the Festival. 1. community partnerships: We are interested in fostering a special relationship between artists and the broader community. This is reflected in our policy to donate part of the profits from each event to a non-profit organization. In 2003, 75% of the profits went towards two distinct organizations: Mujer a Latin American women's organization ($1,000) and to Eva's printshop a non-profit organization which helps homeless youth in downtown Toronto ( $1,000). This year, 33% of the profits from the Festival will go towards The Latin American Coalition Against Racism, (LACAR). A very interesting project is also in the works with Casa Salvador Allende. This is one of the few Chilean organizations which develops socio-political and cultural projects. www.casasalvadorallende.com . We have proposed the creation of a portable exhibition or "museum" that recounts the migration of Chileans to Canada since the military coup in 1973, and their ongoing fight for democracy and social justice in Chile, as well as in other parts of the world, including Canada. For more information on the Solidaridad Museum click here. • back to top.   2. literary arts: Writing, whether in the form of poetry, short story or scripts has the double benefit of being both accessible and able to narrate people's experiences, thoughts, feelings and ideas. This year, the Festival wanted to reserve this special space for the expression and promotion of female artists. A subcommittee was created with the participation of Constanza Durán and Sandra Alland and with the generous support of the Toronto Women's Bookstore. The result will be a series of three workshops and a literary event within the Festival. For more information on the Literary Events click here.   Interview with Rodrigo Barreda Artistic Director.   “We need to generate our own spaces and resources to be able to tell our reading of history...” How was the Festival conceived? This Festival is an alternative to previous forms of commemorating the military coup in Chile. As soon as we say this, some get the impression that this is a highly politically charged event. Others believe that we are trying to move away from our past, our personal stories and leave the recent history of Chile behind. Our reality is that there is a generation of people, daughters and sons of political refugees and exiles, that came after the military coup, whose lives are directly influenced by Chile's history, by politics. A history of constructing social change through peaceful, constructive processes, but being willing to defend them at very high costs sometimes. I believe this generation is continuing the struggle their parents were engaged in, but in a very different context and scenario. The context of a Chilean community continously searching for ways to heal from trauma, of a multicultural society where the marketing of culture is extremely powerful, of a large Latin American community of immigrants with little access to resources that would allow them to build identity and construct a future, etc... But perhaps most importantly it's a different context from say, ten years ago, because this generation is eager to tell their stories today. These stories within the Festival are what make this form of commemoration of the Sept. 11th coup in Chile "different" from previous forms. The Festival was conceived by daughters and sons of Chilean exiles as a way to voice our social-political views in a very powerful form, through art. Does the Festival seek to promote Chilean or Latin American artists? Latin American artists. Since very early on in our history as an immigrant community, Chileans have had to deal with their national pride and chauvinism and understand that we need the support of the broader Latin American community. This unity has a price: you have to give back that support. This hasn't been an obstacle though, Chileans have been involved in the founding of many social, artistic and political projects and organizations which have helped the community. The involvement of other Latin American Artists is one of our greatest challenges as the organizing committee for next year. Approximately 50% of artists benefiting from the festival are not Chilean, but out of approximately twelve people participating in one way or another in the organizing of events, only three are not Chileans. We need to create the basis for an organization and we need to get other Latin Americans involved. • back to top.   Doesn't this concept of a Festival of art linked to social-political struggle contribute to a new cycle of marginalization? I don't believe it does. On the contrary, our objective is to incorporate the marginalized stories and histories to the "official" writing of our own histories. We are living in very interesting times. Each day we have access to more and more resources to promote information, opinions, ideas, solutions to very complex problems. In this context there is a tremendous struggle to integrate different perspectives. We need to generate our own spaces and resources to be able to tell our reading of history which has always and I mean for decades been the marginalized, the unheard reading of history, the one that found no space 500 years ago in the Spanish priest's writings, under Pinochet's regime in the seventies or on today's Hollywood movies . There is a very broad and creative community of First Nations, Latin American and immigrant artists and cultural workers. We want to promote their art, their stories.