Culture wars in Brazil: The far-right and their failure to protect cultural heritage

Abstract

Far-right politicians in Brazil are attacking and censoring cultural heritage and enacting policies that go far beyond cultural heritage. These politicians are also dismantling the structural frameworks that protect, secure, encourage and enable cultural heritage at a time when it is experiencing serious and systematic crime threats. This is despite legal obligations in the Brazilian Constitution to protect it. In addition, these politicians are missing opportunities in the sector from which they could benefit hugely, as could the Brazilian population and the cultural heritage. Instead of waging ‘culture wars’, politicising security, and failing to adequately protect cultural heritage, a viable alternative is to govern the cultural economy.

Keywords

Art crime cultural economy cultural heritage crime culture wars Brazilian cultural heritage

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Balcells

(2019) One looter, two looters, three looters … the discipline of cultural heritage crime within criminology and its inherent measurement problems. In: Hufnagel

Chappell

(eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.33–53.

Baker

(2010) Governing through crime – The case of the European Union. European Journal of Criminology 7(3): 187–213.

Block

(2011) European police cooperation on art crime: A comparative overview. Journal of Art Crime 4(1):13–25.

Bryman

(2016) Social Research Methods, 5th edn. Oxford University Press.

Calirman

(2012) Brazilian Art under Dictatorship: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, and Cildo Meireles. Duke University Press.

Chappell

Hufnagel

(eds) (2014) Contemporary Perspectives on the Detection, Investigation and Prosecution of Art Crime. Ashgate.

Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (2008) República Federativa de Brasil/Federative Republic of Brazil Constitución Política de 1988, conreformas de 1996, em inglês 1988 Constitution, with 1996 reforms in english. Available at: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/br/br117en.pdf (accessed 3 December 2019).

Costa

(2008) Creativity, innovation and territorial agglomeration in cultural activities: the roots of the creative city. In: Cooke

Lazzeretti

(eds) Creative Cities, Cultural Clusters and Local Economic Development. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, p. 78.

Costa

da Rocha

(2007) The incidence of the receiving and illicit trafficking of works of art in Brazil. Journal of the Course of Law São Paulo 4(4): 263–282.

10.

Crawford

(2009) Governing through anti-social behaviour. Regulatory challenges to criminal justice. The British Journal of Criminology 49: 810–831.

11.

De Lemos

(2016) IBRAM Museums and Public Policies: The Brazilian Context. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB35fE7nKT4 https://www.britishcouncil.org.br/sites/default/files/apresentacao_eneidabraga.pdf (accessed 21 November 2019).

12.

De Mello

(2017) List of the Main Historic Abandoned or Closed Properties in Rio de Janeiro. IPHARJ.

13.

De Mello

(2018) List of the Main Stolen or Vandalized Historical Assets and Public Monuments in Rio de Janeiro. IPHARJ.

14.

Dos Santos

(2002) Policies of memory in the creation of Brazilian museums. Journal of Sociomuseology 19: 115–137.

15.

Dos Santos

(2003) Museums and memory: The enchanted modernity. Journal for Cultural Research 7: 27–46.

16.

Dos Santos

(2005) Representations of Black people in Brazilian museums. Museum and Society 3: 51–65.

17.

Dubin

(2006) Incivilities in civil(ized) places: ‘Culture Wars’ in comparative perspective. In: MacDonald

(ed.) A Companion to Museum Studies. Blackwell, pp. 477–493.

18.

Fidelis

(2018) Queermuseum: Cartographies of Difference. EAV.

19.

Franca

(2018) The art of crime – new models of governance, compliance and accountability for the art world, Freedom from Fear, pp.120–125. Available at: http://f3magazine.unicri.it/?p=1559 (accessed 29 November 2019).

20.

Franco

(2018) Planning and running exhibitions Museology notebooks. Vol. 3 IBRAM. Available at: http://www.museus.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/midia/CM2018-PlanejRealizExpo_VersaoWEB.pdf (accessed 26 November 2019).

21.

Funari

(2001) The challenges of destruction and conservation of cultural heritage in Brazil. Works of Anthropology and Ethnology Porto 41: 23–3.

22.

Hunter

(1991) Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Basic Books.

23.

Ibram (2013a) Programme for risk management of Brazilian museum heritage. Available at: http://www.ibermuseos.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/programa_PGRPMB_web.pdf (accessed 8 December 2019).

24.

Ibram (2013b) Risk management of Brazilian museum heritage. Available at: http://www.museus.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/cartilha_PGRPMB_web.pdf (accessed 2 December 2019).

25.

Ibram (2014) Museums and tourism: Cooperation strategies. Available at: http://www.museus.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Museus_e_Turismo.pdf (accessed 25 November 2019).

26.

IBRAM (2019a) National Register of Museums. Available at: https://www.gov.br/museus/pt-br/acesso-a-informacao/acoes-e-programas/cadastro-nacional-de-museus (accessed 28 November 2019).

27.

Ibram (2019b) Seminar ‘Heritage on fire: Who’s next?’ Available at: http://www.icom.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ANNOUNCEMENT_Fire-risk_FINAL.pdf (accessed 10 December 2019)

28.

Kerr

(2015) The Securitization and Policing of Art Theft: The Case of London. Ashgate/Routledge.

29.

Kerr

(2018) The art of violent protest and crime prevention. Arts 7(4): 61.

30.

Kerr

(2020) The state of heritage and cultural property policing in England & Wales, France and Italy. European Journal of Criminology 17: 441–460.

31.

Knauss

(2007) The present: Between the celebration of the 70th anniversary of IPHAN and the theft of cultural goods. Journal of the General Archive of the City of Rio de Janeiro 1: 175–185.

32.

Linnemann

(2013) Governing through meth: Local politics, drug control and the drift toward securitization. Crime Media Culture 9(1): 39–61.

33.

Machado

DDO

(2019) Anti-money laundering regulation on the Brazilian art market. Legal Journal of the Presidency Brasilia 21(123): 95–121.

34.

Mackenzie

(2011) The market as criminal and criminals in the market: Reducing opportunities for organised crime in the international antiquities market. In: Manacorda

Chappell

(eds) Crime in the Art and Antiquities World: Illegal Trafficking in Cultural Property. Springer, pp. 69–85.

35.

Mackenzie

(2019) White-collar crime, organised crime and the challenges of doing research on art crime. In: Hufnagel

Chappell

(eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 838–853.

36.

Mangas

(2017) Collection and memory: Operations of the Brazilian Institute of Museums. In: Porto

Trzmielina

O’Sullivan

, et al. (eds) Creating and Implementing Collections Policies/Collecting the Contemporary: Records of the seminar COMCOL Brazil 2015 Management and Development of Collections. COMCOL, pp. 42–51.

37.

Manini

Greenhalgh

(2016) The relevance of organisational culture in implementing security systems against robbery and thefts of rare books. In: National Assembly of Information Science Research 17 Salvador: ANCIB.

38.

Miranda

MPS

(2012) The practices of the public prosecutors in the defence of cultural heritage. Journal of the Mineiro Association of Public Prosecution Belo Horizonte Belo Horizonte 43 n. 2, Jan./Jun.

39.

OECD (2019) Available at: http://www.oecd.org/brazil/ (accessed 28 November 2019).

40.

Oosterman

Yates

(2020) Policing heritage crime in Latin America. Latin America Brazilian Journal of International Law 17(3): 275–290.

41.

Parque Lage (2019) Activity Report 2017-2018. School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage.

42.

Pelegrini

(2015) Authoritarianism versus freedom of expression: Brazilian theater dribbles past censorhip with insight. Antitesis 8: 67–90.

43.

Porto

(2015) Brazilian museums & visitors: Statistics, research, examples-an overview. PDF Presentation at International Tourism and UK Museums, Birmingham, UK, 12 March 2015

44.

Querin

(2020) Heritage sites: How Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous communities leverage archaeology and architecture to protect their histories and challenge the hegemonic heritage discourse. Latin American and Latin Visual Culture Jan 2(1): 82–91.

45.

Salvo

(2010) The economy of crime and culture: The market of stolen works of art. Latin American and Caribbean Law and Economics Association (ALACDE) Annual Papers.

46.

Schneider

Atencio

(2016) Reckoning with dictatorship in Brazil: The double-edged role of artistic-cultural production. Latin American Perspectives 43: 12–28.

47.

Simon

(2007) Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford University Press.

48.

UNESCO (2019) Properties inscribed on the World Heritage List. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/BR (accessed 28 November 2019).