FIL’s income from the ticket office is low: it is true that the influx of visitors is very high, but also that the cost of the ticket borders on the symbolic – it is a public policy to promote reading, not a business – and that a majority of the attendees are groups of students who do not pay admission. Different dependencies of the University of Guadalajara –its institutional origin– sponsor some forums but not the majority. Sponsorship from the public sector is always subject to fickleness and, given the fickleness of the current tenants of the National Palace and Casa Jalisco, by then they had been reduced to enthusiastic and supportive but modest municipal support. None of this had threatened the fair until then: the bulk of its income derives from the rental of exhibition space and rooms for presentations to publishers who, in the course of the nine days it lasts, sell what they do in no other week of the year; the problem was that this model seemed impossible that year. It ended up being.
It is public: the FIL knew a deficit of 25 million pesos in 2020. That, however, was an experience that allowed us to assess and learn: we assessed the institutional design of the fair – one that allows it to be autonomous in legal and financial terms decades ago and reinvest its profits, so as to be prepared for an event of force majeure– and the solvency and inventiveness of its director, Marisol Schulz, who revealed herself not only as a great editor, reader and promoter but also as a great administrator, capable of implementing a financial rationality dedicated to survival, not to the gallery. We also learned quickly: to invest what was necessary to shore up the FIL’s digital ecosystem to make it what it is today –a virtual fair as well– and to seek new sources of financing.
Perhaps anyone who attended a FIL Guadalajara last year that was already fully face-to-face might have come across Libros al Gusto –the gastronomic discussion platform sponsored by La Costeña– or a brilliant table on women’s entrepreneurship presented by Veuve Clicquot. They are a logical consequence of the vision of the same Raul Padilla who knew how to recruit Telmex to help finance a world-class auditorium for Guadalajara, Santander to build the most modern performing arts complex in the country, the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation to provide it with an agora, or Moët & Chandon to pay for programs that support emerging talents –students as well as professionals– in the cinema.
Perhaps the best cultural promoter that Mexico has ever had, the founder of FIL –but also of the Guadalajara International Film Festival–… knew how to develop public/private collaboration schemes for the benefit of his city, his state, his country, convincing to politicians and businessmen that –as he himself said– culture is not an expense but an investment.