Snarky Sue

La cultura, ese ingrediente invisible que da sazón a nuestras ciudades, vuelve a ser la primera en irse al fondo del caldero. Pero esta vez, el guiso no lo narra un cronista de libro de historia, sino una administración local con sonrisa democrática y tijera presupuestaria.

El pasado 15 de julio de 2025, Daniella Levine Cava, alcaldesa del condado de Miami-Dade, anunció una serie de recortes para enfrentar un déficit de más de 400 millones de dólares en el presupuesto fiscal del próximo año. Entre las propuestas: un recorte de más del 50% de los fondos que eran destinados a programas culturales, la eliminación del Departamento de Asuntos Culturales a través de un “merging” con el sistema de bibliotecas del condado y la redistribución de sus fondos hacia el este departamento.

¿Cómo se explica este déficit tan profundo? ¿Es simplemente resultado de recortes federales o estamos también ante un desmadre administrativo disfrazado de “plan de ajuste”?

Las cuentas no cuadran, y tampoco las prioridades.

Culture — that invisible seasoning that gives our cities flavor — is once again the first thing tossed to the bottom of the pot. But this time, the story isn’t told by a historian in a dusty book. A local administration narrates it with a nice smile and a very sharp budget-cutting knife.

On July 15, 2025, Daniella Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade County, announced a series of cuts to address a deficit of over $400 million in next year’s fiscal budget. Among the proposals: slashing more than 50% of the funding for cultural programs, dissolving the Department of Cultural Affairs by merging it into the county’s library system, and redirecting its funds to the library system.
So, how exactly do you end up with a hole that deep? Is it just the result of federal budget cuts, or are we looking at a full-blown bureaucratic mess wearing a “fiscal adjustment” costume?
The numbers don’t add up. And neither do the priorities.

CULTURE IN A YARD SALE: When art gets in the way of Excel.

What is the Department of Cultural Affairs? It’s a public agency dedicated to strengthening the work of arts organizations and artists in Miami-Dade County through grants, and technical assistance to help promoting arts education; making cultural activities more equitable and accessible to all residents and visitors building and upgrading cultural facilities, operating arts centers, managing public art projects, and enhancing the visual quality of the county’s-built environment.

Now, the proposal to dissolve this department — accompanied by the firing of its director, Maria Laura Leslie — is not just some technocratic fix. It’s a symbolic declaration: culture is no longer essential. The department’s budget, which represents approximately 1% of the county’s total budget for Fiscal Year 2024–2025, has kept hundreds of cultural organizations, festivals, community projects — and, yes, jobs — alive. And now? What’s left will be “relocated” — a fancy word for “sent somewhere else, where artists aren’t on the guest list.”

Let’s be honest: this isn’t a fight between books and art. It’s about transparency in public management. It’s about asking why this county is facing such a massive financial sinkhole — and why the solution always seems to involve silencing cultural expression.

In times of darkness, art lights the spark. It’s no coincidence that authoritarian regimes fear a verse more than a tank, a song more than a political speech. Art —that profoundly human and visceral expression— holds the power to question, confront, and move. That’s why, when freedom begins to tremble, art is often the first target to be silenced.

Throughout history, every time a dictatorship has felt threatened, it hasn’t been by weapons, but by ideas —ideas carried in underground poetry, defiant murals, banned films, and songs that become anthems of resistance. Artistic sensitivity does more than document reality; it dares to imagine a different future. And for those who govern through fear, nothing is more dangerous than a liberated imagination.

Art disturbs not only because of what it says but also because of what it reveals: the cracks in power, the contradictions in the official narrative, the misery hiding beneath grandeur. That’s why dictators don’t just censor—they design. They create their own iconography filled with heroic portraits, posters with hollow slogans, and an aesthetic of uniformity that replaces diversity with obedience, thought with submission.

This article explores the artistic phobias of authoritarianism—from the cultural purges of Hitler and Stalin to today’s gag laws in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Venezuela, among others. It also examines how dissident art survives, reinvents itself, and continues to challenge power from exile, the underground, or the margins. Because wherever a song is silenced, a chorus rises. And wherever a painting is banned, a thousand more are created in the shadows.

This is a journey through the invisible trenches where a symbolic war is fought: art against fear.