Short Abstract:

This research explores the nexus between commitment, artistic agency, and human development in the marginalized "Tenencias" of Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. Despite being spaces marked by poverty and social vulnerability, these areas have become hubs of artistic expression, fostering the development of human capabilities among their inhabitants.

Long Abstract:

The “Tenencias” in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico, are vulnerable spaces for populations displaced by poverty in search of better social and employment opportunities in Morelia's suburbs.

They are also spaces of artistic creation that have empowered people in vulnerable situations and provided them with social commitment and agency. Coming from rural areas and impoverished by the lack of work and social opportunities, the inhabitants of the “tenencias” in Morelia have developed several human capacities such as social affiliation, the ability to build social ties, the development of senses, creative imagination and critical thinking, the sense of responsibility for others and the social agency to develop creative and artistic events and workshops.

This research aims to analyze how the social commitment of the inhabitants of these estates has been able to generate human capacities that allow them to legitimize their identity and their possibilities of political action through art and artistic work. This work adopts the perspective of community self-determination, in which, through the implementation of participatory methodologies, it is possible to build in community conceptual categories and reflect on social practices through life stories, stories about particular experiences and conversational analysis.

Through a socio-anthropological analysis and from a socio-critical paradigm, we seek to make visible the lack of cultural spaces for vulnerable populations and the difficulty in exercising the right of access to cultural expressions as an inalienable human right, as is the case of the subjects who live in the Tenencias of Morelia, Mexico.

Also, the analysis of Cultural Policies shows that there is no correspondence with the population's specific needs and identifies the sources of their inefficacy from their inception. It also suggests elements that should be considered to ensure that cultural policies have a positive social impact.

Although cultural spaces are present in this population, the state has not participated in building them, and actually, they have been mainly managed and administered by civil society organizations; they have achieved that sectors of the community that generally did not have access mechanisms to exercise a fundamental right to art, finally, they can profess, to a certain extent, said right. In this way, these civil organizations have realized new forms of relationship with their environment, generating a more critical vision of their community and becoming a factor of social transformation in favour of human dignity.

Keywords: Commitment, artistic work, human capabilities, human dignity, social agency.