This Wednesday, at 11:30 in the morning, dozens of workers, teachers and students of the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) were stationed in front of the headquarters of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), in the street of Hamburgo, in the Juárez neighborhood, to demand a greater budget, job security and dignity of the campus.
An hour earlier, the general director of the Institute, the anthropologist Diego Prieto, spoke with El Economista, and declared that the “tidal wave” in the ENAH it was a “solved” problem. “There is still a stir and concern that we can take advantage of to strengthen the process of reconversion of the school,” he added.
But the community of the ENAH It now calls not only for the rehiring of temporary workers, which number 60, but also to compensate the backwardness that for years, they say, the school suffers, and correct its “precariousness”.
Photo by EE: Cortesía / Twitter @AG_ENAH
Last weekend, the ENAH turned on social networks by the publication of a letter from its director Hilario Topete Lara addressed to the anthropologist Prieto, in which he indicated that to comply with the instruction issued by the Administrative Secretariat of the INAH if the “temporary” personnel were not rehired, more than 60 activities would cease to be carried out and the campus would be paralyzed.
It was then that the presidential spokesman, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, took to Twitter on January 2 at 2:41 p.m. to put out the fire, ensuring that no ENAH worker would be fired and that all those who had worked in 2021 would be rehired. Statement confirmed by Diego Prieto an hour later.
“It was a misunderstanding caused by an erroneous reading, or a misinterpretation” – says Prieto – of a circular issued by the Administrative Secretariat of the INAH on December 29, which to the letter says: “No one should be summoned to work. person who has been hired as temporary staff as of December 31, 2021, as long as his eventual hiring has not been approved by the National Coordination of Human Resources ”.
After the protest unleashed in the ENAH, the authorities of the INAH they justified the document arguing a criterion of a normative nature and a cost control measure that was instructed to all the administrative units of the INAH, which in each case would have to justify the hiring of “temporary” personnel, as is done annually. “Of course, the operation of the ENAH, my alma mater, the main school of anthropology in Latin America, was never compromised,” Prieto assured.
The official reiterated that the institution is committed not only to the 60 “temporary” workers of the ENAH who demand job security, but to the almost 2,000 who work in that condition and who contribute to the investigation, safeguarding and dissemination of cultural and historical heritage. and archaeological of the nation.
“The commitment is that the contracts of the temporary personnel will be signed this Monday, January 10, and the first payment will be made to them no later than the 25th of this month,” explained Prieto.
Budget, Achilles heel
An Achilles heel of the INAH in recent years it has been the budget. More or less, it is never enough. The director Diego Prieto is criticized for not having defended the financial adequacy of the institution. When he became director, he received the institute’s budget of 3,262 million pesos for the 2017 financial year, 15% less than the previous year (3,720 million pesos). The pandemic came in 2020 and with it the cut of 750 million pesos for austerity; By 2021 it remained in the line of 3,820 million pesos, with a tight waist, and in 2022 it recovers a little of what was lost in 2020, with a budget of 4,011 million pesos and the hope of reaching 800 million pesos in resources self-generated, when archaeological sites and museums can be opened wide.
However, to face the payment of the 2,000 “eventual” (the quotation marks are imposed because many of them have been working for the INAH for decades), that budget only contemplates 86 million pesos, but at least another 450 million pesos are required, that –said Diego Prieto– will be obtained through the financial extensions that are usually requested each year from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) –the last year they were 460 million pesos– or through self-generated resources.
I would like to point out that since he assumed the Directorate of INAH, six Finance Secretaries have already passed. Why has it not been possible to resolve this situation at its roots? -I ask.
The holder of the INAH explains that it is a complex and very old problem – it comes from decades, he says – and it has to do with administrative disorder in the past and with a policy of thinning of the State that was taking away base positions from the INAH and they were being replaced by other figures that were not contemplated in the budget authorized by the Ministry of Finance, as is the case of the “compacted” and “undocumented”.
He recalls: “In 1980 the INAH had 4,500 base positions, and towards the end of that decade and the beginning of the nineties more than a thousand had disappeared, and had been replaced by invented or apocryphal contracts that had no budgetary support, that in order to Eliminate union positions, even during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term, voluntary retirement was promoted, and the rank-and-file worker was compensated but the position disappeared. And the unions accepted that practice ”.
Over the years and with the demand for work it has, the INAH It grew in a disorderly way, without control, with disproportionate salary tabulators – there were more than 80 categories, he says – and that also lent itself to bad practices and little transparency.
“Today what we are doing is reordering, with transparency, having greater control of spending, discipline and order, for the benefit of the institution itself and of fellow workers.”
It also pointed out that with respect to unionized grassroots workers, the same happened with the general working conditions (CGT); benefits were accumulating for workers and conditions that were never validated before the Ministry of Finance, which meant an irregular expenditure.
“Today what we are doing is reviewing these CGTs with the workers and with the Treasury authorities, to regularize them and give them budget support. But it is a job that is not done overnight, especially because the lag has been decades behind. I believe that this will be a great achievement this year, as important as the one we achieved last year by promulgating the Regulations of the INAH Organic Law, “he added.
2016, the year we live in danger
Diego Prieto assures that the substantive tasks of the INAH and the ENAH they are not in danger. “The year that we did live in danger was 2016, because they wanted to dismember the institute, they wanted the schools (ENAH, ENCRyM and EAHNM-Chihuahua) to go to the SEP, for the museums to be absorbed by a general direction of museums of the Secretariat of Culture, and that archaeological zones will be administered differently; which meant losing the historical vocation and mandate of the institute, but “the financial situation of the INAH it was unsustainable; Teresa Franco (her predecessor) opposed this proposal, she fought and that’s why she left ”, says the anthropologist.
Finally, he says that in order to face the commitments with temporary workers, “we have the affirmation that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made at the morning conference yesterday – and we can expand the phrase to INAH- ‘the resource that the ENAH will be given ‘, that is how concrete ”. That is the confidence we have ”.
However, that “misinterpreted” letter, which induced “unfounded concerns”, as Prieto expressed on Twitter to the presidential spokesman, and which only alluded to “temporary” workers, opened a Pandora’s box that will not be easy to close.
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Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx