Court Orders Reopening of Cartoon Exhibition Censored by City of Porto Alegre

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A local court has ruled that the cartoons critical of President Jair Bolsonaro and his administration, censored by the President of the Porto Alegre City Council at the beginning of the month, are again to be displayed to the public in the lobby of the Municipal Building.

The ruling, made Thursday September 12th, determines that the cartoons be “promptly repositioned” in the same venue and during the same twelve days previously established. Judge Cristiano Vilhalba Flores, of the 3rd Public Finance Court issued the decision on Thursday.

The show lasted less than 24 hours. Called “O Riso é Risco: Independência em Risco – Desenhos de Humor” (“Laughter is Risk: Independence at Risk – Humor Drawings”), the exhibition was shown between 7 PM on Monday, September 2nd and the beginning of Tuesday afternoon, September 3rd, when it was removed by order of city councilor Mônica Leal (PP). The exhibition was to run until September 13th, but it was censored.

“In the specific case of cartoons, although always having a humorous nature, political or ideological issues are of their essence and can never be regulated by a legal or ethical standard, because, naturally, their interpretation will always be biased, political, or ideological, therefore, subjective,” wrote the judge.

Furthermore, according to the judge, “any inspection and inhibitory act would be linked to the dominant political or ideological power at the moment of its publication and to a high degree of subjectivity. And, if this form of censorship were admitted, freedom of expression and art could always be challenged. Therefore, it is impossible to prescribe what is sacred or profane to someone or to a State body”.

The exhibition with 36 drawings by 19 artists, including the likes of Santiago and Edgar Vasques, was organized by Grafistas Associados do Rio Grande do Sul (GRAFAR) with the support of city councilor Marcelo Sgarbossa (PT), who formally requested to use the venue, one of the attributes guaranteed to councilmembers.

The week when Brazil’s independence is being celebrated, some of the pieces question the country’s sovereignty under Donald Trump’s United States; others denounce the indigenous, environmental and human rights issues.

“It was censorship. It’s like censoring an opinion column in a newspaper. A cartoon is both opinion and criticism. Now the panels that support the drawings are in a corner, chained up, which is very symbolic,” Leandro Hals, president of GRAFAR, an organization founded four decades ago during the military dictatorship, told Folha.

For the city councilor who ordered the pieces to be rounded up and stored, the drawings offend Bolsonaro, so they should not be exhibited.

“They are offensive cartoons with President Bolsonaro licking Trump’s boot, with an empty presidential chair with a potty underneath. I had the exhibition taken down. Regardless of the president or the party portrayed, it is not conceivable to hold an exhibition that offends the president of a nation,” said Leal.

Cartoonist Celso Schröder says the city councilor’s argument that the cartoons “offend Bolsonaro” is the same as the radicals who attacked the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo with the justification that the cartoons offended Islamic leaders and Mohammed. Twelve people died in the 2015 terrorist attack on the newspaper.

“It is the same argument as in the Paris attack, it is unsustainable. It is state censorship. It is the state preventing a demonstration from taking place. This is censorship,” says Schröder, who is also a professor of journalism at the Faculty of Communication (FAMECOS) of the Pontifical Catholic University of RS (PUC-RS).

The professor explains that criticism of governments and politicians is the essence of cartoons. “Cartoons use humor. Humor, in order to work, must build a paradox that impacts the reader, resulting in a tension that finds its way out in laughter, so that a kind of catharsis can be built. It’s a drawn joke”, he says.

“Freedom of expression is a guarantee that derives from human dignity, an achievement of civil rights already enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights when in its Article 19th it established that every human being has the right to freedom of opinion and expression,” wrote the magistrate in the preliminary order.”If this were not enough, article 5th, item IX, of the Brazilian Federal Constitution, reads that the expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific and communication activity is free, regardless of censorship or license,” added the judge.

Later on Thursday, the City Council announced it would not appeal the court order, and that the exhibition would be reinaugurated this Monday, September 16th.