Bi-National Meeting of Border States and Regions
Museum of Modern Art — New York, N.Y.
January 19, 2007
(As Prepared for Delivery)

Thank you, Sandra, for your kind introduction. Good morning and Bienvenidos — welcome to New York City. I am honored to join all of you for this first-ever gathering of cultural leaders from the border regions of Mexico and the United States. I appreciate everything you are doing to promote cultural exchange and understanding among our two nations.

This morning I am pleased to acknowledge some important people and institutions:

• The United States-Mexico Foundation for Culture and its Executive Director, Gilberto Palmerín, and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and its President, Sandra Gibson, for hosting this meeting.
• The U.S. Embassy in Mexico and CONACULTA, the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Mexico, for supporting this gathering.
• The members of our State Humanities Councils in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas who are here today.
• Their counterparts from the State Arts Councils and the Institutes and Councils of Fine Arts in Mexico.
• My fellow speaker this morning — Sergio Vela, the new President of the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Mexico. Mr. President, we are honored by your presence.
• My counterpart at the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia, who will be here later today.

I also wish to pass along greetings from the Chairwoman of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, Adair Margo of El Paso, Texas, who unfortunately could not join us today. I know she wishes she could be here. Adair is a lifelong admirer of Mexico's rich cultural and artistic heritage — and she has worked tirelessly to expand cultural relations with our friends in Mexico.

Among Adair's many activities, she has organized numerous visits of leading American citizens to Mexico to learn more about Mexican art and culture. Several years ago, I had the good fortune of taking part in one of these wonderful excursions, when Adair led a group to see Paquime, Casas Grandes. As most of you know, Casas Grandes is the most important archaeological site in northern Mexico and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In pre-Columbian times, its inhabitants developed a remarkable and beautiful style of pottery. Today, thanks primarily to the efforts of Mexican artist Juan Quezada, this wonderful ceramics tradition has been revived — a living spirit from Mexico's ancient past.

Juan Quezada's lifework is a model for us all, as we seek to recover the past and bring our history and cultures alive for our peoples today. This work of recovery and renewal is a vital part of the mission of each organization represented at this meeting. For example, at the National Endowment for the Humanities, we are working through our "We the People" initiative to re-familiarize Americans with our nation's past and principles.

Yet NEH and every cultural organization here today also share a broader responsibility: We must also help our citizens understand and learn more about the history and culture of other nations. At NEH, we seek to discover and honor the full human story — a story whose setting stretches far beyond America's borders.

After all, it is impossible to understand the history and culture of the United States without reference to other cultures and times. Nations do not emerge from a vacuum; many streams have flowed into the current of our heritage — and Mexico and the Southwest region are among the most important of these sources.

That is why I am proud of NEH's strong support of scholarship and public programs that explore the history and culture of Mexico and the border region. In the five years I have been Chairman of the Endowment, we have approved over 7 million dollars in funding for 83 projects focusing on the history and culture of Mexico, Mexican-Americans, and the border region. Among these many projects, here are just a few examples:

• In the summer of 2004, NEH sent 25 elementary and middle school teachers to the beautiful Baroque city of Oaxaca — another UNESCO World Heritage Site. These teachers spent five weeks studying the history, culture, literature, and arts of Oaxaca — and then returned to their classrooms to share their experiences with generations of students. This year, NEH will send twenty-four college teachers to another summer institute in Oaxaca to study the Zapotec and Mixtec indigenous cultures.
• Last summer, a grant from NEH's "We the People" initiative made possible a residential workshop for teachers called "Southwest Vistas: The Border in American History." At these workshops, teachers had the chance to study with leading scholars of U.S. and Latin-American history, and share strategies for teaching with primary sources. One of the faculty members who took part in these workshops, Dr. Norma Cantú, is here today representing Humanities Texas.
• NEH has supported two important preservation projects at the University of Texas in Austin. The first is the microfilm preservation of over 350 rare 19th-century Mexican newspapers. The second project, begun just last year, will digitally archive endangered Mexican, Central, and South American language materials.
• NEH has also provided funding for "Traveling El Camino Real" — a permanent exhibition and related public programs about the history of the famous road between Mexico City and Santa Fe.

The Camino Real is a fitting subject for me to conclude with this morning, because it is a good metaphor for the work that will occur at this historic bi-national meeting. When the Southwest was under Spanish rule, the king built El Camino Real — "The Royal Road" — to connect the lands we now know as Mexico and the southwest United States.

Today, through your presence at this meeting and your efforts in your own regions, you are helping to build a new Camino Real — one that connects our nations and citizens not physically, but instead with links of culture, history, and shared knowledge and understanding.

Once again, I am honored to be here with each of you today. Thank you.