Impediment in culture

Abstract

On the 1st January of 2019, the day when Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of Brazil, it was published in the Federal Register a provisional measure which impacted Brazilian artists, cultural producers, and cultural researchers, because it caused the extinction of the Culture Ministry. Transformed into a Special Bureau subordinated, first, to the Citizenship Ministry and, later, to the Tourism Ministry, the Culture Ministry existed for 37 years. It was created in the democratization period of Brazil, after the Military Regime, when the new Constitution, from 1988, was created and was considered the Citizenship Constitution. To reflect about the impact caused by the extinction of Culture Ministry for the cultural sector, the PhD and master in Policy Science, by São Paulo University, Rafael Moreira, and the journalist and actor, Lincoln Spada, who has experience in cultural management in cities from the state of São Paulo, decided to write the book The end of Culture Ministry: reflections about cultural policy in the post-MinC age, published in 2021, by Imaginário Coletivo publisher (Santos, São Paulo), and reviewed here. Besides making a saying about the creation and the extinction of Culture Ministry, the book presents interviews with artists, researchers, producers, cultural managers, and with an ex-culture ministry, who reflect about the play of MinC in the construction of public policy for the cultural sector.