No Noche Blanca this June as city concentrates on basics
Mérida, Yucatán — In what remains of the administration of Interim Mayor María Dolores Fritz Sierra, Noche Blanca won’t be on the agenda.
On this election year, the City Council will focus on public health, education and security said Victor Hugo Lozano Poveda, the city’s general coordinator of community policy.
Noche Blanca is a sprawling citywide festival that unleashes hundreds of performances and exhibits at once. In 2017, Mérida hosted one in June and another in December.
The coordinator said that Mérida is the only city on a national level that has a permanent, daily and free cultural program, which has earned it the title of American Capital of Culture on two occasions. In other parts of the country, similar events charge for admission or are organized sporadically,” he said.
A new administration will be voted in this July 1, and take the helm in September. It will be up to them to decide the future of Noche Blanca.
For Lozano Poveda, the Noche Blanca initiative is not a partisan issue, but one of perspective. He recalled that in cultural matters, it is one of the programs that has had the greatest roots in the population, not only by Meridanos, but also by people from all over the republic and abroad.
“I believe that Noche Blanca has been established as a cultural and identity product of the city of Mérida, so it must remain; but those decisions will touch whoever is going to assume the next mayor’s office in the city,” he said, in Spanish.
Noche Blanca has enjoyed great acceptance by the public because, he believes, paradigms have been broken and the dynamics of the city changed.
“Nothing is going to stop, we will continue working together with the tourist, restaurant and commercial sectors, because they are the ones who benefit,” Lozano Poveda said.
Source: La Jornada Maya