WHAT DOES A BOOK MEAN IN MEXICO?
In other
words, what are these legislators who at a recent conference in Xalapa stated
that they intend to tax the book with the value-added tax of a new account,
including food and medicines, as a failed attempt in Time of President Fox. One
can think two things, that we are before uninformed economists whose stock
boils down to technical questions related to his profession. If they intend to
tax the book, they are supposed to have in their hands a previous study to know
everything about the book, which in the end is made by people outside the
books.
Or is such
an action obeying a sinister plan to promote collective ignorance and make this
country a general world of workers, masons, craftsmen and technicians? And
another very reduced number of professionals and leaders to guide them.
Evidently
all the ways of the IVA to the book, go against the education in Mexico in all
its headings. Pretexts are many. The truth is that general education in Mexico
is still a reflection of the old positivism, which believes in a pedagogy for
the rapid formation of people; Machines that are going to produce and to
dedicate themselves to a specialization.
Wrong
policy no doubt.
Because the
Mexicans of the third millennium are denied the instruments for a full life and
for a human culture. Educational pragmatism is always counterproductive: a
specialist, an ignorant technician, or an ignorant economist, produces less and
produces evil, because he thinks less and thinks badly.
It is said
there that Germany produces excellent soaps because Kant wrote, Critique of
Pure Reason. It is proven that now you are reading these lines and you are
breathing, that literary culture is indispensable in any profession. If people
do not know how to express themselves in their language, they will not be able
to think in their language and consequently can not be a good professional
human being or a good citizen.
That is why it is a scandal the quality of
education in Mexico and if we add the measures that could take Treasury to
obtain resources such as VAT to tuition, or tax collection at the cost of the
sacrifice of reading hours of millions of Mexicans, Then the picture is bleak.
Before this
crime is committed without punishment, we make a careful call to the guiding
head of CONACULTA to take action and avoid that cursed temptation to want to
tax the book today that we are on time and persuade the legislators of a new
taxation to tax the books.
Because to
suppress the books is to suppress the words, the language, the one that teaches
you to think, to dream, to assume responsibilities, to rebel, to choose and if
it is not able the person in charge of the culture in this country and the
Secretary of Education of Teaching children to dream of traveling with their
language from primary school, our country will continue to be destined to be a
disintegrated nation, half illiterate, half-cooked people like today are
millions of us.
In France
and in England, the need to know the language well is emphasized. The French
children of eleven and twelve have read all their classics, mention Molière,
Descartes and Pascal, recite poems by Eluard, Prévert and Desnos.
It is
impossible to forget that every book is the son and father of another book.
From Homer to Joyce, everything is influence. But Shakespeare and Cervantes are
the first to establish clearly the literary confines of every written work: the
theater within Hamlet, the reading of Don Quixote, by Don Quixote himself.
The
surprise is that The Bible, one of the most important books and extraordinarily
written so far ... would be taxed. This is a challenge to all power. It is a
challenge to write. Petulance to the need and the pleasure of communicating,
since all reading will inevitably result in writing. What would have happened
in the time of Moses, if the little that could be read, had been taxed empires
and monarchies? If that which absurd perished is now a reality, let us prepare
ourselves to pay taxes soon enough for the air we breathe or the number of rays
of sun that lie on your skin.
You do not
need to tell me, kind reader, to know that you as a reader and elector citizen,
you are beyond being a guinea pig, or why be taken hostage to cynical
privileged losers in a country where, precisely, opportunities to talents They
do not hang from the trees.
If
literature were well taught in Mexico, our cities would be more beautiful, more
human, and more habitable, because its inhabitants would give more and demand
more. Our cities are the reflection of the inconsistency and mediocrity of
education that is taught in our country. Then add
VAT to the book, practice
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