The 60th anniversary of the civil-military coup is now upon us, and Brazil is grappling with the consequences of the putschist storming of the three branches of government and the exhibition Brasil Futuro: As Formas da Democracia, which at the time was on display at Brasilia’s National Museum of the Republic.
By common standards, an artist is someone unique, special and superhuman. Naturally, such a projection can only be possible once it has been absorbed by the issues surrounding Beauty and sustained by the different “sources of distance” found between artists and the audience. Whilst many notions have been put under pressure over the course of modernity and such endeavours have continued into contemporary times, we cannot ignore the fact that, historically, the spectacular and all its technologies persist victoriously and efficiently as far as delighting/dominating the public is concerned, by distancing them from the artists and even from Art. It should be stressed that this distance appears to be a cornerstone of said relationship, which is why common sense is not entirely wrong. Indeed, Fernando de Azevedo argued that the first “education system” in the so-called Brazil, the Jesuit system, which for more than two centuries was an act of epistemicide, did nothing more than “accentuate, through the gap between the intellectual elite and the masses, the horror of manual and mechanical labour”. At the core of our backwardness and violence, lies this logic of division, a “schism”, a separation between the material world and the spectacle of the Beauty, of which artists are the labourers, although they may not always see themselves as such. This rift between art, ideas and the masses, the people, the arm, entails both delights and misfortunes. This is especially important as certain highly relevant themes for society, when expressed by artists, are labelled “artist’s stuff”. This means that they are special people far removed from us and from any palpable reality. This has largely been the nature of the debate around democracy in Brazil. What does it mean in people’s everyday, real, poverty-stricken lives? When it comes to the dictatorship and/or the storming of the three branches of government, how do we see ourselves as a nation? How have we been communicating the need to uphold democracy?
Speaking to My News recently about the fight for amnesty during the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985), lawyer Ana Müller, founder of the Brazilian Committee for Amnesty/RJ and founder of the Workers’ Party, points out that “the issue of memory, as we see in Chile and Argentina, truly generates citizenship and an attachment to memory (…). All attempts here in Brazil to honour and rescue memory are actually tempted to be wiped out by this elitist society supported by the military in the sense that they perceive themselves to have complete impunity. We recently witnessed, for example, a monument built at Clube de Regatas do Flamengo to the missing politician Stuart Edgard Angel Jones. This was a beautiful gesture during the Dilma government (2011-2016). This monument was put up because Stuart, as well as being a political activist, was a multiple rowing champion for Flamengo. People connected to him in rowing, people who were not in any way involved in politics, were moved to tears. That monument no longer exists, it was torn down (…). There is a daily effort to prevent this memory. In exchange for what? They do not want to strengthen democracy. If we look at international politics, we can see that discussing memory is not only a pressing issue in Brazil. Germany, for one, is seeing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as the favourite in this year’s elections, notwithstanding the fact that, in the view of the head of the German Intelligence Agency, it poses a threat to democracy due to its anti-Islamic and racist rhetoric. Its leader rejects “erinnerungskultur“, the official German culture that strives to be mindful of the Nazi genocide. On erinnerungskultur, he declared: “This stupid policy is still crippling us to this day. We must turn this memory policy on its head,” the DW report points out. This is clear evidence of the efforts against memory condemned by Müller, also on an international scale.
Stuart Edgard Angel Jones, born in Salvador, Bahia, on January 11, 1945, was an economics student, a member of the 8th October Revolutionary Movement (MR-8), through which he joined the armed struggle against the military dictatorship, and perhaps took part in one of the MR-8’s greatest achievements: the kidnapping of US ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick on September 4, 1969, which led to the release of 15 political prisoners, who were to be exiled abroad, and the publication of a manifesto in the media against the dictatorship. Stuart was arrested, tortured and murdered by police and armed forces during the Brazilian dictatorship. His mother Zuzu Angel was a renowned fashion designer who made numerous contacts, including international ones, to denounce the dictatorship and punish the military for the crimes perpetrated against her son and other political prisoners. Zuzu died in 1976 in a car accident masterminded by the murderous military. In 2006, the film bearing her name, directed by Sérgio Rezende, was made about her endless quest and painful journey. The wrongs endured by the Angel Jones family are also remembered in the song Angélica (1981), by the magnificent Brazilian composer, writer, thinker and singer Chico Buarque de Holanda in partnership with the outstanding Miltinho. According to Revista Fórum, the song has been re-recorded and is expected to be re-released on a new album soon. And this is a striking point: which victims of the dictatorship had the means to overcome the obliteration and present their own version of the facts? For various reasons, particularly economic ones, we have a very fragmented way of constructing memory about the dictatorship.
Speaking to Irene Loewenstein, the educator, thinker and activist from Rio de Janeiro notes that there have only recently been initiatives such as the website Apoio ao Educador – Memorias da Ditadura, which features theme-based educational sequences with an up-to-date approach that can be adapted to any educational context, using different methodologies and topics that deal with the indigenous community, black movements, workers, the LGBTQIAPN+ community and their ways of opposing the dictatorship. Through these different perspectives and stories, we can come to recognise the military dictatorship as a national disaster, not just for a group of middle-class intellectuals and artists from Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. Admittedly, these people have managed, with enormous difficulty, to shape and raise awareness of a narrative that stands up against the hegemonic and coup-plotting account of the dictatorship. But all this effort needs to be made by the rest of society. We must have the conditions, incentives, tools and courage to do so. The vast majority of cultural products at our fingertips reveal the massive presence of middle-class documents, events and characters. This means that this class “leads” the narratives depicting the struggle for democracy and survival of the military dictatorship in Brazil. This leadership cannot be defined as Machiavellian, but it proves to be yet another form of control and domination, ultimately a consequence of the economic circumstances and inequalities underpinning and surrounding the country.
This “excessive representativeness” of the middle class is bound to result in the common-sense perception that the dictatorship was an issue for middle-class heroes and heroines and rebellious artists. As a result, it is widely believed that those who did not fit into these groups hardly suffered at all, or worse: those who did deserved it. This logic is utterly flawed and is conducive to the idea that the conservative wings want us to have: authoritarianism would only be harmful to criminals, artists and revolutionaries. This lie suggests that “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” and that the dictatorship would not be a concern for those who were “good citizens” and rejected any association with “problematic” groups. This “over-representativeness” even occurs through cultural products that we have at our disposal and that have achieved considerable visibility, such as the miniseries Anos Rebeldes (1992), whereby the fight for freedom, for an end to authoritarianism and repression, becomes less political-social-collective and more individual, with sexual and artistic freedoms, etc. These same freedoms, as well as the struggle in their defence, would have been exerted and built by and for the white middle class. But we know that authoritarianism impacted the nation at several levels and in different ways over the course of more than two decades. But where are the documents that show the memories of poor, black, working-class people, the country’s majority, concerning this period? The absence of narratives about this group in the bulk of cultural products addressing the memory of the dictatorship clearly means that there is an urgent need to boost the development of productions that focus on their perspectives. This is not, however, a failure that dictatorship survivors should anticipate. Perhaps they could not even do so. This is a call for Brazilian managers, thinkers, directors, filmmakers, museologists, curators, storytellers, teachers and contemporary artists.
But there is a major obstacle in this direction: a significant part of the Brazilian artistic, intellectual and cultural class is intensely nostalgic about the 1960s and its heroes, heroines, speeches and practices that stood up for political, artistic and cultural freedoms. They are convinced that there was a group of artists, thinkers and agents capable of representing the entire struggle for freedom in the country. This excludes other forces and groups. They also believe that a rare quality was attained in cultural products despite the dictatorship (some dare to imply that it was even because of it). From an elitist and idealised viewpoint of the time, artists from the so-called MPB, for example, are seen as voices of the nation, representing a unity of values, expressions and symbols of national cultures. Usually with a university education, the group promoting this perspective opts not to add some historical facts to their narrative, including the one pointed out by the Brazilian critic Roberto Schwarz, according to whom in 1970 the so-called “Brazilian culture” never reached 50.000 people on a regular basis, despite a population of over 90 million at the time. Which means there was never a moment when Brazilian cultures were represented and clearly defined. If there was such a thing, it did not happen in the 60s and 70s. This would have required the inclusion of numerous expressions and artists that the MPB had never touched, for example. The outcome of this imagination/narrative is also creative stagnation. For instance, Tropicália is hardly outdone. It is only venerated. And even worse: works that dare to “outdo” it are often rejected. Remarkably, this rejection is diluted when one of the 60s legend gatekeepers declares that they admire some other artist. And then this person, recently introduced to the “Brazilianness” pantheon, is subjected to nostalgic ideals that display a profound lack of understanding of that historical moment. Analysing the facts critically is not about rejecting the past, quite the opposite: it is urgent to look at it in an intelligent, honest and intricate way. We must be artistically daring and politically strategic. Ultimately, this nostalgia is reinforced when Brazilian society has been maimed of its delirious, propositional character. The possibilities of victory are all in the past. Everything is a symptom of tragedy.
Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, born in Salvador, Bahia, in 1916, was a journalist and owner of the Correio da Manhã newspaper. In 1948, she was involved in the founding of Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM), which she ran for a decade. In January 1969, Niomar Moniz Sodré had her political rights withdrawn by Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5), and was subsequently placed under the National Security Law and imprisoned. Speaking to the author of this essay, Ana Müller, one of her secretaries at the time, said that Niomar was arrested as soon as she arrived in Rio following a trip she had made to Recife to demonstrate against the dictatorship. When she landed in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, she was taken to the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) and, due to her pulmonary emphysema, was sent to the Fire Brigade health centre after a heated argument with General Luiz França de Oliveira. During the first few days of her “hospitalisation”, she had no contact with any doctors and almost died. As a result of international pressure, however, she was placed under house arrest. The health centre where Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt was hospitalised and imprisoned was located on the top floor of the building that now houses the Rio Art Museum (MAR). In light of this account, MAR must not only tell the story of Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt’s symbolic imprisonment, but do so in such a way that people can recognise themselves in History. This means broadening horizons and incorporating other readings, views, points of interest and discussions about the dictatorship and Brazilian democracy. Where were the poor, black, LGBTQIAPN+, disabled, indigenous, peasant and Northeastern people during the dictatorship? What scars did this authoritarian, violent and unequal regime leave on these families? This is the big question that will allow civil society to identify with the need to protect democracy and discuss the horrors of the dictatorship. This commitment will be heard after January 8. The artistic, intellectual and cultural classes, especially the public cultural sector, cannot shy away from this it.
The Rio Art Museum is hosting the exhibition Brasil Futuro: As Formas da Democracia until March 10. Intriguingly, this is the only exhibition in the country that deals with democracy in such terms, albeit opening up to, for instance, indigenous views of the concept. The exhibition was conceived shortly after President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva’s election triumph. According to anthropologist and historian Lilia Schwarcz, one of the exhibition’s curators, “after four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, the major theme would be democracy. Democracy not as a finished project, but precisely as a project that is by definition incomplete, a process, since we can never finish building people’s rights. This is how the idea for the show came about.” The travelling exhibition chose to take a different route from the traditional one, where the first stop is São Paulo or Rio. Firstly because we felt it was fair, since the Lula government owes a lot to the Northeast. But we also did it for a political reason: our stories are still heavily Southeastern. In other words, the Southeast speaks for the nation. That can’t be right, can it?”, says the curator. Starting in Brasília, in the Centre-West, the exhibition opened its tour at Casa das Onze Janelas in Belém, Pará, in the north of the country, where it was jointly curated by visual artist Roberta Carvalho. After leaving Belém, Brasil Futuro: As Formas da Democracia went to Centro Cultural Solar do Ferrão, in Pelourinho, Salvador, Bahia, in the Northeast, where it was shown before heading to Rio Art Museum (MAR), in the Southeast. The exhibition is widely recognised as “the outcome of hundreds of workers who spared no effort to build and bring to life the dream of a possible, democratic and socially just Brazil”. Perhaps because it so accurately represents several key democratic pillars, the exhibition Brasil Futuro: As Formas da Democracia was stormed by the coup plotters on January 8, 2023, when it was still at the National Museum of the Republic (MuN), before they had even reached the Praça dos Três Poderes.
Educator Fernando Franq, who was on the receiving end of the invading coup plotters, recalls his traumatic experience: “(…) And it was insane, because, when I got to the museum, I remember seeing lots of people heading down towards the Esplanade, many of them wearing Brazil shirts, with lots of groups shouting at the top of their voices. (…) And then I remember arriving (at the museum) and starting to hear points of discussion, many people photographing the artworks, moving too close, talking aggressively about them. I remember coming up to some of these people and saying ‘Hi, what’s up? Do you want to talk about the works to understand them better?’. Someone was saying that Lula was paying for it and I was trying to explain, right? It was my job, it was my duty, I was a mediator. (…) I remember this one girl who was deeply, deeply disturbed by a piece in which there were several switched off televisions, and there was a person kind of coming out of it, a melted figure, there were also some military items, there was a pig, and she said: ‘here you are insulting the police, calling them pigs’. I said ‘no, wait, do you know the context?’. I explained that it had been the work of a person who lives in a Rio de Janeiro favela, where the population is experiencing this sort of violence and the police often seem more of a threat than a form of protection (…). One piece had several people laughing and they said, ‘they’re laughing at us. I know what you’re talking about, you illiterate people. I have a degree in art!’, and I said, ‘so do I, so let’s try to talk, shall we? Like civilised people?’. We couldn’t hold a conversation, we couldn’t exchange ideas, we couldn’t do our job. So it was decided to close the museum, right? We did so. We waited a while to leave as a group towards the bus station. Then we took the underground, got home and turned on the television and things were already being completely destroyed.”
Faced with the raid of the Brasil Futuro: As Formas da Democracia exhibition when it was presented at the National Museum of the Republic in Brasília on January 8, 2023, we must be aware of the fact that there is no such thing as ignorance when it comes to authoritarianism and its relationship with society. Sometimes there are strategies and logics that are difficult to comprehend because they are concealed under the veil of nonsense. We therefore need to debate what art is in times of wars fuelled by the escalation of conflict imposed by neoliberalism and “neo-authoritarianism”.
New data from the 2022 Census disclosed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reveals that Brazil has 580.000 religious institutions (of all kinds) compared to 264.000 educational institutions and 248.000 health centres. In other words, we have more religious institutions than hospitals and schools combined. This may well mean that we must consider the culture generated in these religious centres when thinking about the memory of the dictatorship and also when putting forward a dialogue on democracy. In the end, there are more than half a million centres of aesthetic, philosophical, artistic and cultural reference. This dialogue must be different from the one usually offered by the Academy. We should revisit the point made by Alfredo Rosi, according to whom “religious forms are again of interest to scholars in Brazil, no longer as ‘residues’ of a backward and barbaric mentality, but as powerful stimuli to communal life, group outlets for despair and oppression, not to mention their role as inexhaustible poetic and musical sources”. This interest has been expressed, for different reasons and in different ways that are also problematic, by religions of African roots, such as candomblé and umbanda, for instance. But it did not develop with the evangelical churches. Their leaders today wield enormous political and electoral power.
That said, much of the Brazilian artistic class is no different from the elitism that cripples much of the white, academicist left, according to which the Church (initially Catholic) is in tune with every hegemonic, capitalist, slave-owning and misogynist perspective. While this approach is entirely coherent and true, based on historical facts and documents, it is also inaccurate when it imposes a dichotomy that prevents us from understanding the following: the current power wielded by the Evangelical Churches in Brazil stems not only from this “domineering nature” that many perceive in these Churches, but also from several elements pointed out by experts on this growth, who, generally speaking, identify the absence of the Brazilian state in deprived, peripheral and black territories as a crucial factor in this surge. Such absence, which even continued through the military dictatorship, continues to manifest itself in the most perverse and violent ways, especially through police violence and high unemployment, notwithstanding the victory of democracy. When looking at the surface of the problem, we should not be prevented from focusing on the centre of it. Dialogue is achieved when we go beyond the superficial. For instance, we need to discuss police violence, which, in a movement similar to genocide, murders young black men minute by minute, day by day. To deal with this issue, we not only need to portray police officers as pigs, but also discuss and represent who makes them pig-like. In other words, we need to establish dialogues on the curricula offered by military schools in Brazil, the wages of police officers, the treatment that young people face when they compulsorily join the Brazilian Army and the wider expressions of violence that engender and generate other expressions of violence. If the Brazilian artistic and political classes want to deal with democracy, politics and violence with an intelligent and reasoned approach, they must study ways of dealing with them that go beyond what the academy and social media allow us to discern. On top of this, evangelical culture can become a strong expression of Brazilian black and popular culture. The debate is serious and calls for both courage and responsibility. This dialogue cannot only take place between like-minded people.
On February 10, the Carnaval Saturday in much of the country, a very representative meme took over social media. The singers Baby do Brasil and Ivete Sangalo had a peculiar dialogue during the encounter between the electric trio in which Sangalo was singing and the booth where Baby was and through which a public TV station was broadcasting the festivities. At one point during the short conversation, Baby do Brasil delivered a religious speech according to which everyone should be on their guard because “we are entering the apocalypse. The rapture is due to happen between 5 and 10 years from now. Seek the Lord while you can,” Baby declared. On the trio, Ivete Sangalo, in a clever move, but without hiding her surprise, replied: “I’m not going to let it happen, because there is no right apocalypse when we hack the apocalypse”. Baby asked Ivete to sing “Minha Pequena Eva”. The song is a huge hit during Carnaval. But the reason Baby made the request is because the song refers to the apocalypse. But the request was not granted. In a delicate and brave tone, Ivete announced that she would be singing Macetando, a collaboration between her and the remarkable singer-songwriter Ludmilla. The track was one of the biggest hits of the 2024 Carnaval.
The political scientist and sociologist Joscimar Silva, a professor at IPOM UnB, commented on this episode between Baby do Brasil and Ivete Sangalo at the Salvador Carnaval on X (formerly Twitter). According to Silva, “Baby, or rather Apostle Baby of the Nations, is now working on a project to spread gospel culture to unreached territories. In interviews, when she returned to the stage years after her conversion, she even stated as much. From the Dominion Theology perspective, to which Baby and the international apostolic coalition are subscribed, society is made up of ‘mounds’ under which Christian conservatism should rule: church, education and science, economy and business, government, culture and entertainment. Carnaval, as Brazil’s biggest celebration, would not be left out of this. Dominion Theology claims that the churches should no longer hold retreats, but instead stay and occupy the cities fighting against the Carnaval gods”. Silva nevertheless points out that “the Dominion Theology is not the one guiding all evangelical sects, as many evangelical groups are tolerant, ecumenical and respect Brazilian popular culture without wanting to dominate it. This is so evident that many evangelical friends, including leaders, are now going to Carnaval without any domination project, but just to socialise. Culture and social groups are not airtight,” the professor says.
Besides studying the different religious and political leanings within evangelical churches, we must pay close attention to how we respond to these scenarios. The actor and playwright Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, one of the creators of the popular series A Grande Família, claims that “the most popular approach there is to conquer tragedy, to discover tragedy; to look tragedy in the eye is to subdue it”. Hacking the apocalypse meant voicing the people’s response to the disaster. For instance, Ivete Sangalo’s reaction represents the act of proposing a counter-narrative through dialogue. We must hack it, that is, carry out an honest and popular dialogue about the tragedy represented by the authoritarian discourse. At first, one could easily believe that Sangalo simply ignored Baby’s request. This cannot be the case, since Sangalo also mentions God and offers another narrative that best suits the moment and herself, as in a good dialogue. And this only happens when there is a search for common ground, references (such as “god”), shared concepts and experiences to propose something that suits us. This exemplifies a necessary democratic act. If we start from the premise that dialogue is the key to negotiation or revolution, we must include another premise: having it as a bridge between unequal sides. This would mean taking on the political character of art and building new memories and democratic narratives.
