THE DISMANTLING OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE

Brazilian culture has been the target of different attacks in the past two years, which have undergone acts of censorship and ideological control, often linked to budget cuts for cultural productions; institutional restructuring and dismantling, marked by the decrease of civil society participation in public decisions; political-institutional interference, such as the dismissal of public servants in ‘misalignment’ with the government; and violations of institutional autonomy, made through appointments incompatible with the technical character required for strategic public positions in cultural sectors.

The acts of censorship and ideological control are visualized, for example, from the government’s cancel of cultural productions with LGBT+ themes and those that deal with the memory of the military period, indicating the defense of values ​​such as ‘the traditional Brazilian family’, the approximation of Bolsonaro administration with the Armed Forces and a discourse of historical revisionism of the dictatorship. The control, in turn, occurs mainly from budget cuts and reduction of funds in bodies that are not aligned with the vision supported by the government.

The institutional restructurings, on the other hand, are marked by the attempt to dismantle the public machinery in the cultural sector, which began with the extinction of the Ministry of Culture and its transformation into a Secretariat linked to the Ministry of Tourism. Other examples of restructuring consider the decrease of civil participation in the Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage (Iphan), and studies kept confidential about the possible extinction of the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa.

The political-institutional interferences are observed through the dismissal of public servants in ‘misalignment’ with the government, often due to public criticism of the bodies and institutions of which they are a part. Examples of this practice are visible in the resignation of the president of the National Arts Foundation (Funarte), who came out in defense of a critical pronouncement of the institution, and exonerations of 19 civil servants by the Citizenship Minister in opposition to the conduct of Funarte.

Finally, violations of institutional autonomy have been marked, especially, by appointments incompatible with the technical criterias required by law for strategic positions, such as those observed at Palmares Foundation, Audiovisual Technical Center and Funarte.

See these and other recent attacks on Brazilian culture in the timeline below.