BRAZIL: Controversy Rages over Gilberto Gil’s Cabinet Appointment

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 27 2002 (IPS) - The loudest controversy ahead of the Jan 1 inauguration of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil is raging in the area of culture, even though the biggest dangers the country is facing are on the economic front.

The naming of Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil as culture minister two weeks ago unleashed an ongoing storm of debate from a sector that has long backed Lula – as the president-elect is known – and his leftist Workers’ Party (PT).

”I have admired Gil for 37 years as one of Brazil’s most creative artists, who is sensitive to everything that is going on, able to reflect Brazil’s diversity in music, and inventive in promoting a cultural revolution. But none of that is sufficient for running the ministry,” writer Eric Nepomuceno commented to IPS.

The ministry ”needs above all an administrator of ideas, more than a generator of ideas,” said Nepomuceno, who served as secretary of special projects in the Culture Ministry in the 1990s.

A similar view was expressed by Roberto Mendes, a film producer and the owner of a home video business that specialises in nationally-made films. He told IPS that it was a ”mistake” to believe that an excellent artist would make a good minister.

The culture minister will have to fight hard for public funding for an area that has never been considered a priority for governments in Brazil, as reflected by its paltry budget, Mendes pointed out. He argued that to lobby for a greater share of public resources, the ministry will need someone with experience and skill in management.

Mendes, like many others in the world of art and culture, also regretted that the new minister was not a PT figure with links to the programme ”Imagination at the Service of Brazil”, designed during Lula’s campaign based on broad debates with representatives of the sector.

Gil, a founder of the counterculture Tropicalia movement in the 1960s, is one of the most prominent members of the Green Party, which backed Lula’s candidacy. But he did not take part in the discussions on the ”Imagination at the Service of Brazil”, also known as the Programme of Public Policies on Culture, promoted by the PT.

The hugely popular musician reacted with irritation to the criticism, but failed to demonstrate that he has any ideas or projects of his own to guide and direct ”the complex cultural question in this modern and globalised world,” stated filmmaker Joao Batista de Andrade in the framework of an ongoing Internet debate among movie lovers.

”Unquestionable prestige” does not automatically qualify someone for the post of minister, said Andrade, after questioning the naming of members of the cabinet as part of political deals and the use of artists in election campaigns or as ”ornaments” of the government, a practice he said was used by dictatorships.

Andrade, who has made films that have had an important place in the history of Brazilian filmmaking, said he hoped Lula would revise his ”senseless and rash choice” of minister.

His colleague Jean Claude Bernardet, better known as a historian, critic and professor of film at the University of Sao Paulo, called for a resistance movement to block Gil’s swearing-in as minister.

But his call failed to produce a response. Orlando Senna, a prominent scriptwriter and director, said that ”what’s done is done,” and recommended that people instead pressure the Lula administration to implement the policies discussed with the PT, and to continue the debate on a programme for the national audiovisual industry.

The tone used in the debate over Gil’s appointment was especially harsh in the world of theatre. Director Gerald Thomas accused playwright Augusto Boal, a well-known PT militant, of being a ”fascist” and of ”betraying the industry of the oppressed” by echoing the criticism of Gil’s designation as culture minister.

Boal is the creator of the Theatre of the Oppressed, a method of doing theatre in the streets, prisons and shantytowns as a form of protest and to promote an understanding of oppression and exploitation among the oppressed and exploited.

In his response, Boal referred to Thomas simply as GT, ”to remain coherent with the size of his character.” The diatribe was published by the Rio de Janeiro daily Jornal do Brasil.

The controversy was mainly triggered by the fear that with Gil as minister, the Programme of Public Policies on Culture, the collective product of a process of consultation with all of the concerned parties, will be forgotten.

The programme views culture as ”a basic social right” and a decisive factor for development and in the reduction of social inequalities, of which Brazil is a world champion.

The plan’s concrete proposals are aimed at democratising the production of and access to cultural products, decentralising the public resources earmarked for cultural initiatives, in order to favour diversity, and promoting broader participation by society in decision-making and policy-making in the sphere of culture.

One of the objectives is to correct the distortions that have been aggravated by the policies of the outgoing administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, which based its culture policies on fiscal incentives to encourage large companies to sponsor artistic and cultural production.

That policy was one of the reasons that 85 percent of investment in the area is now concentrated in Brazil’s largest cities, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, outgoing Culture Ministry Francisco Weffort acknowledged.

That heavy concentration of resources, which has hurt cultural diversity, has also aggravated the inequalities between Brazil’s regions, the text of the Programme of Public Policies on Culture argues.

In addition, decision-making power has been transferred to large companies, and cultural initiatives by the public have diminished, with the ”absence of a strategic blueprint for the sector,” according to the authors of the programme.

BRAZIL: Controversy Rages over Gilberto Gil’s Cabinet Appointment

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 27 2002 (IPS) - The loudest controversy ahead of the Jan 1 inauguration of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil is raging in the area of culture, even though the biggest dangers the country is facing are on the economic front.
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