This Friday, October 18, on the opening day of the Venado Tuerto Book Fair, the book LUZ Movimiento Pro-Arte y Cultura, authored by Manuel Herbas, will be presented from 4 p.m., who announced that they will be present at the opportunity the actors Horacio Martínez, Carlos Záttara and Oscar Barotto, who will share anecdotes and reflections on the play. There will also be allusive songs and there will be Rafael Sevilla, one of the organizers of the undertaking – in its third consecutive edition -, reading poetry by his uncle Pablo Sevilla, one of the ideologues of the historic cultural movement of October 1982.
“This work was born from a call from the National Theater Institute for research scholarships, in the midst of a pandemic, seeking to sustain the performing arts. In that context Radio drama contests, virtual plays and also these research grants on theatrical resistance were promoted in the territory, throughout the country, and although in Venado Tuerto there was no specific experience of these characteristics, there was LUZ, which summarizes “a fact of resistance supported by a set of artistic disciplines that included theater”Herbas elaborated on the genesis of creation.
Different scenario
What was LIGHT? “Firstly, a large multidisciplinary call, without partisan bias, although with strong political and ideological content, and a clear antagonism, with a very well identified enemy, which was the dictatorship and its representatives, and that facilitated the unification of the popular sectors. Without a doubt, a very different scenario from the current one, where the political and economic orientation is similar to that which was then imposed by force, but the popular field does not show cohesion, but, on the contrary, suffers a strong dispersion, added to the degradation of militancy and political formation, along with a global trend that promotes individualism and removes incentives for collective construction,” reasoned the lawyer and writer.
With the renowned theaterologist Jorge Dubatti as tutor, Herbas applied for the scholarship, was selected by the organizers and began the work, which was based on a series of interviews in audiovisual format, “not with all the protagonists, but with those who, In my opinion, they had stood out in the LUZ Movement, such as Roberto Meier (teacher at the Industrial College), Fernando Peirone (Ameghino Library), Carlos Záttara (actor), Carlos “Cane” Rosenzvaig (first director of Culture in the democratic restoration), Oscar Barotto (actor), Guillermo Pieli (actor), Horacio Martínez (actor) and Alejandro Videla (Veteran of the Malvinas War). It was a beautiful work, where everyone agreed on the centrality of the remembered Pablo Sevilla as the ideologue of the creation of LUZ, who knew how to persuade, with conceptual clarity, that it was a time to add, instead of dividing into partisanship. Also important was Juan Carlos Rodríguez, who, in addition to directing the cultural magazine Expresion, had a lot of influence in the local media,” he highlighted.
Six months before
“The organizational meetings, which began about six months before October 1982, were semi-clandestine, in different bars in the city, with groups that little by little were expanding, as artistic expressions were added,” Herbas recalled, and He thanked “Ñoti” Martínez for his collaboration in revising the texts. “The first job was the textual recording of the interviews, but the definitive material included details of names, dates and places, knowing that, as a complement to the audiovisual, a book would be published based on said interviews,” commented the author of the investigation, who also made a special mention to Fernando Peirone, for the prologue, and to the undersigned, for the synopsis on the back cover (see below).
Later, a call was launched by Espacio Santafesino for various artistic productions and Herbas nominated the LUZ book with the hope that it would be published and distributed in the 191 popular libraries of the province, and although the project was not selected, the The author nevertheless imposed himself on the commitment to publish it, and so it was, with the financial help of several sponsors who joined forces to preserve the memory through this book that recreates the core moments of the massive gathering of more than 6 thousand people. , mostly young people.
In seeking to measure the influence of LUZ, Manuel Herbas said that “it represented an unprecedented political and cultural feat in the region, at a very critical moment, at the end of a lost war, and from then on, offspring of that feat of the October 3, 1982, such as the Ameghino Library, the Free Faculty, the Art Shed and the Center for Young Expression (CEJ), among others.”
Back cover synopsis
“More than 40 years ago, after the Malvinas War, the transition from dictatorship to democracy accelerated, and in that spring of ’82, LUZ (with capital letters) emerged as a synthesis of the climate of the time on the Venadense plain.
Even with ideological nuances, a young militancy built, with its call, an artistic, cultural and political feat, which exceeded its expectations and, in addition, transcended its time, since it became a platform for numerous collective creations – equally successful – with the passing of the decades.
It was surprising, however, that the unprecedented day only remained alive in oral tradition, until the appearance of this book, in whose pages, several of its protagonists do justice and restore the collective memory with their memories; If not, how can we imagine a square filled with men and women of all ages and becoming a gigantic stage for the most diverse cultural manifestations. How to do it without these lucid first-person contributions.
Reading these texts is not an obligation for anyone, but it is a benefit for everyone, for the contemporaries of the LUZ movement and for the new generations, because they transport to our days the deep sensations of an experience that had to be rescued before it was too late. “.