SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Since taking office on January 1st, 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro has announced several measures that many say are dismantling the country’s councils and reducing society’s participation in important national institutions. Although this tendency has been seen in several areas, such as drugs, environment, and indigenous rights, the changes have hit the cultural sector especially hard.
“We want to wipe out the councils, extinguish the vast majority of them so that the government can function. We cannot be held hostage by councils, many of them occupied by people appointed by other governments,” said the president recently.
Last week, on the heels of the controversy surrounding the possible extinction of ANCINE (National Cinema Agency), the government announced it was eliminating the PNLL’s (National Plan for Reading and Books) Advisory Council, made up of representatives of civil society.
Created in 2006 and implemented in 2011, PNLL outlines the federal government’s permanent strategies to promote reading in the country.
“By publishing this decree modifying the structure of the PNLL, the Bolsonaro government reaffirms its dislike for any critical civil society participation in government actions. It is about breaking the most direct (and critical) bond of the PNLL leadership with civil society organized around the topic,” says José Castilho, former Executive Secretary of PNLL. “By extinguishing the Advisory Council, the government tries to stifle legitimate social pressures and reaches the heart of the PNLL, which is precisely to listen permanently to society,” he adds.
The exclusion of members of civil society from these councils, say experts, reduces the political effectiveness of these entities, failing to give society a voice when it comes to essential government policies.
“Without the participation of civil society in the councils, we no longer have social control over the execution, monitoring, and evaluation of public policy outcomes,” says Dimitri Sales, President of the São Paulo State Council on Defense of Human Rights. According to Sales, council closings “is the extinction of democracy and social control.”
The antagonism towards councils established in previous administrations and members not aligned with the current federal administration can also be seen in the newly appointed heads of important cultural entities.
In a message through social networks, playwright and newly appointed president of Funarte (National Arts Foundation), Roberto Alvim, called on those “who align with conservative values” to join him in the theater world to “create a machine of cultural warfare.”
“Balancing this game by fostering and giving material means for the creation of works of art (…) that poetically emancipates the viewer, as opposed to works guided by a progressive agenda and which promotes an ideological leadership discourse.”
“Yes. It is a fight similar to the crusades. Like the Christian warriors of the past, we are fighting for our Judeo-Christian civilization, and against its destruction by progressive forces,” he told local media recently during an interview.
The hostility coming from segments of the Bolsonaro government towards the cultural sector has been so strong that, at the beginning of the month, former Brazilian culture ministers released an open letter criticizing some of Bolsonaro’s decisions when it comes to the sector.
“We, former culture ministers who served Brazil in different governments, express our concern about the devaluation of and hostility to Brazilian culture,” stated the letter issued on July 2nd, 2019. “We reaffirm the importance of culture in three basic dimensions: as an expression of our identity and diversity, as a fundamental right, and as a vector of economic development, contributing decisively to the generation of employment and income,” the former culture ministers went on to say.
According to the document, despite limited resources, throughout the years the ministry has been able to “defend, formulate, foster, create and innovate Brazilian culture, respecting traditions since the Portuguese empire.”
“Brazilian art and culture, in addition to their internal relevance, have contributed to a positive image of the country abroad,” concluded the statement issued by former ministers, Marta Suplicy, Juca Ferreira, Francisco Weffort, Luiz Roberto Nascimento Silva, and Marcelo Calero.
Seven months after the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration, the scenario to be implemented by the government in the cultural sector is slowly beginning to emerge. The strategies to be adopted by the government clearly point to conservative, ideologically-driven policies, with little feedback from society and no public participation in decision-making.