Ministry of Culture and “la locura” for Latin America

The Americanist and multiculturalist view of student and activist Gilberto Gil in the 1960s and 1970s celebrated in the anthem-song “Soy loco by Ti America” was maintained years after the politician Gil entered the scene.

The “portunhol” [a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish] verses by a friend from of the university, José Carlos Capinan, were written in the early hours of the capture and execution of Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Che Guevara, in 1967, in Bolivia.

Of those times, Gilberto Gil was left with the aspirations of a continent where exchanges were not restricted to trade, but to the cultural and symbolic exchange of peoples with great similarities, such as indigenous roots, but also with rich differences, such as language.

And this idea was emulated when Gil took over the Ministry of Culture (MinC, in the Portuguese acronym) between 2003 and 2008, during the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration. In the photo, the then minister visiting an indigenous village, in 2004.

Under Lula's developmental, inclusive project, Gil structured public policies aimed at cultural diversity and at bringing neighboring governments closer together.

An important step was to extend the protagonism of these policies to other portfolios, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE, in the Portuguese acronym).

This mission expanded the actions of both the MinC and the MRE with the UN and its agencies, especially the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

And also with Latin America, Africa, China, Russia, India, South Africa, Arab countries and other international forums. In the image, Gil with Lula and Celso Amorim, former minister of Foreign Affairs, during the inauguration of the Brazilian Embassy in Saint Thomas and Prince in 2003.

Among the main measures organized by MinC (2003–2008) to strengthen South-South exchange were:

1) The Development Agenda at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), created by Brazil and Argentina and signed by eight Latin-American countries in 2004.

The document proposed that the discussions at WIPO should have the development of the signatories as a horizon, as well as the protection of intellectual property in general.

The latter organized the Meeting of the Guarani Peoples, the South American Meetings of Popular Cultures, and the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity, considered a historical landmark for the constitutionalizing of the region’s demands.

4) MinC made other numerous actions possible; actions which, despite the efforts, had unequal results and encountered barriers such as budget, human resources, and bureaucratic procedures, among them:

To include Brazil's adherence to other forums in order to articulate cultural cooperation in the Southern Cone, such as the South America–Africa Summit (ASA, in the Portuguese and Spanish acronym); and the South America–Arab Countries Summit (ASPA, in the Portuguese and Spanish acronym).

ASPA established cultural exchanges between the member States and Brazil with film, music, theatre, and dance festivals. The dealings with the ASA resulted mainly in exchanges with MinC-related bodies (Palmares Foundation, IPHAN, and Ancine).

May the future find us closer to this fate