Adalberto Ríos Szalay, in dialogue with Gustavo Yitzaack

MEXICO CITY (Process).- When the death of the anthropologist and photographer Adalberto Ríos Szalay (1943-2024) was announced, the contribution of his heritage to national culture was praised, however the artist was much more than that, as stated by the writer Gustavo Yitzaack Garbibay: is the most important documentarian of Mexico’s biocultural heritage, forger-collaborator of institutions, and promoter of the Morelos Institute of Culture, among many others.

With his death, which occurred on March 28, “Morelos closes a cycle in the history of cultural promotion and development. He was a forger and collaborator of cultural and scientific institutions such as INAH, Conaculta, Conacyt and Conabio.

“Influenced by his friendship with the anthropologists Rodolfo Stavenhagen and Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, together with the philosopher Ricardo Guerra, he proposed the creation of the Morelos Institute of Culture which, together with the Regional Unit of Popular Cultures, was a pioneer in Mexico of cultural training. and integration of networks of community cultural promoters and chroniclers, as well as research and support for community cultural centers.”

His work, more than a million images, was declared Memory of the World-Mexico by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in December.

On March 28, the federal Ministry of Culture and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) mourned the death:

“His work, distinctive for its emphasis on the dissemination of the dignities and valorization of the biocultural heritage of his native entity and of Mexico, has been presented in more than 50 countries and is part of the collections of institutions such as the INAH-Morelos Center ; Riverside University, in California; the Benito Juárez House in Havana, Cuba; the Popular Art Center of the Canary Islands, Spain; the Union of Michoacan Migrants, in Chicago, and cultural centers in Sonora and the State of Mexico.

“He carried out visual anthropology and audiovisual documentary work in Purépecha, Nahua, Rarámuris, Seris, Yaqui, Mayan, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Zapotec, Huave, Mazahua, Kikapús and Mixtec communities, mainly.”

It was also recalled that throughout his extensive career he published more than 45 books in Mexico and Europe with the aim of studying and disseminating architecture, tourism and material and intangible cultural heritage, through images.

Its collection, made up of more than a million digital images, has been exhibited in various colloquiums and seminars, as well as a starting point for photographic exhibitions such as the one titled “Mexico in World Heritage”, which toured the regional museums of the INAH. in Tlaxcala and Querétaro, and in spaces such as the San Luis Potosí campus of the Institute of Technology and Higher Studies of Monterrey.

In recent years, around 11 thousand of its images were integrated into the Information and Documentation Center of the INAH-Morelos Center.

In the academic field, in addition to having been a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a guest at the University of San Carlos, in Guatemala, and a lecturer at the Cuban Cultural Assets Fund, the United States Library of Congress, the University of Uppsala, in Sweden, the House of America, in Spain, the organizations of American States and the United Nations for Education, Science and Culture, the latter at their headquarters in Washington, DC, United States, and in Paris , France.

In 2016 he received an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Morelos, where he was a professor and university advisor since 1968.

With Yitzaack Garibay

Below are fragments of interviews that the writer Gustavo Yitzaack did with Ríos Szalay between 2019 and 2024, delivered to Process. There, the artist described himself as a committed Morelos native, the son of working parents, and who since he was a child had the habit of listening to presidential reports for pleasure.

He stated that this is how he learned of stories, such as the new Chihuahua-Pacific railway, that the University City had been inaugurated, a highway for Cuernavaca, the creation of Conaculta, and before that the National Institute of Fine Arts, the INAH, the Conacyt, or that The University of Morelos was created on an old shell that was under construction.

“All of that nourished us and it seems to me that I was lucky to be born here, right? So who knows who I am, but I lived all of that, all of that was sculpting me, but I don’t have the slightest doubt, no, and I say that seeing my father’s effort that I tell you was born in Toluca due to this forced migration of Morelenses who were expelled from their land.”

Regarding feminism, the cultural promoter defined it through the existence of his mother, who only studied primary school:

“I believe that if I had been born in this era I would have been at the demonstrations the other day painting the Angel of Independence as one should and doing things, because I was a feminist woman, when it was not used, she would furiously complain because they had not allowed her go to university and her mother told her “you were born a woman and you are going to be supported, but your brother is going to be supported, things are the other way around”, but she always also had an admiration for the indigenous world, and I I remember that a woman from Tepozteca worked in the house who took care of me, she was my nana, and my mother, she did come from outside (my family was from Morelos, my grandparents, my grandfather was from Morelos, and from a grandmother who could having been on the Paris metro without any problem), although that family came from Yautepec… but my mother immediately learned to make guasmole and eat guajes, and in my house they ate jumiles, I didn’t, to be honest; They would tell me that I’m fifi, right? But I do love guasmole, and the tortillas from Santa Catarina and Tepoztlán too.”

–In your experience, what does the Morelos Institute of Culture mean? Because it also has to arrive in a very complex political context in the State, very violent, right? The crisis of the political system in this region is already underway, the fall of Governor Jorge Carrillo Olea.

–I had my Martian era because I had worked for many years in culture in Cuba, and logically he says: ‘our wine will have to be banana, and if it tastes bad, it’s our wine’, and he says: ‘the jacket and the hats From other places, it’s good that we know them, but we are something else in our America, we are Cubans, we have another attitude, we have another position on life, we will always be open, but we have to build our nation.’ I think it’s exactly the same. And so the question for me about the work of a cultural institute or secretariat, whatever you call it, first of all, is to promote cultural development, not those nonsense that I have now gotten with the right to culture, well, you like it. or we are not going to have it.

“The creators of that all the resources, all the budgets, all the teachers, all the teaching processes must be at the service of that cultural development so that the Tecuans do things that they perhaps do not have, not even clothing, right? Or that the children’s orchestra that has been formed in Tepoztlán has more support due to such conditions. And then the problem is to identify culture with the fine arts alone, and with the pure dissemination of the fine arts. When they talk to you about cultural journalism it is gossip journalism, about how the inauguration was and what they served to drink, there is never, I have never heard, I have never seen critical journalism about the national culture plan, I have never heard anyone say which It is the role of promoters, why are there no scholarships for cultural promoters?

“Those who win the National Creator System are creators. And many of them are disconnected, and I don’t want folkloric art, but when has there been a National System of Promoters? Teaching, research, promotion are totally uncovered and we have gone to the frivolity of abstract inspiration of those things, of that type.”

And regarding the meaning of the recognition of his photographic work as Memory of the World in Mexico by UNESCO, he responded:

“The collection represents a commitment to the World Heritage, to disseminate culture and education, science, the richness of its biodiversity, which also implies the responsibility of keeping it alive and transmitting it to other generations, but the most important thing is make it public and free.”