The Struggle for a Nation's Soul: What happpend at the Brasilia

Remember, on Jan. 8, reactionaries stormed Brasilia, the Planalto Presidential Palace, National Congress, and Federal Supreme Court. United together with their football team shirts, yellow and green dissidents ravaging the cultural and political center of the nation, in reaction to feeling threaten by Lula’s New Brazil in the making.

It was documented exactly what happened, here, but the aftermath and the implications about why such an occurrence happened are yet to be discussed. Well let’s review the damage they did, and what exactly have they destroyed in a fit of rage.

“Among the wreckage were 700 pieces of artwork, decorations, and furniture that were vandalized or destroyed. The invaders ransacked the buildings, which themselves are works of art, designed in the 1950s by one of Brazil’s most famous architects and communists, Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012).” People's Dispatch

“The centerpiece of the presidential palace’s main hall is As Mulatas (“The Mulatto Woman”), painted in 1962 by the great modern artist, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (1897-1976). Though much of the reporting has focused on its monetary value, estimated at US$1.5 to 3.8 million, it is impossible to quantify cultural loss.”

The artist in reference is Di Cavalcanti, who “saw artmaking as an act of political participation, and his work represented the underrepresented sides and contradictions of the Brazilian reality. As a key organizer of São Paulo’s Modern Art Week in 1922 that elevated Brazilian culture and modernity onto the international stage, he joined the Communist Party of Brazil in 1928, and was jailed more than once for his political affiliation.”

“In September 2022, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and several Brazilian partners, including the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), launched the visual art exhibition, 200 years of an interrupted nation | Art as a form of denunciation and resistance. 28 artworks were created as a reflection on the dual anniversaries of 200 years of Brazilian independence and the centenary of the Modern Art Week, which, “despite its limits,” writes the organizers, “tried to represent the true protagonists of a nation that insisted on being born: The Brazilian people, historically marginalized and invisibilized.” Bolsonarismo represents a continuation of this “interrupted nation,” and its insistence on cultural destruction is not an accident, but epitomizes its political p

“dissolve the Ministry of Culture upon assuming his presidency

Remember the “lawfare coup had already been underway for at least two years, which led to the impeachment of Workers’ Party (PT) president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the imprisonment in April 2018 of then ex-president Lula for 580 days on unfounded corruption charges.”

The “tragic fire of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, where most of the 20 million artifacts were destroyed. In response to this fire, Bolsonaro said, “It already caught on fire, what do you want me to do?” When asked about the museum’s chronic underfunding that led to this fire, Bolsonaro responded with mockery, showing his outright disdain for the country’s cultural heritage and the role of art and culture.”

“Very symbolically, he made it one of his first tasks to dissolve the Ministry of Culture upon assuming his presidency. Brazil’s far right, galvanized around Bolsonaro, is a project of violent historical erasure and cultural destruction, in a physical and subjective sense.”

“Bolsonaro had encouraged the illegal burning, serving the interests of agrobusiness and his financiers, at the expense of the planet, the people, and world heritage.

“Winds had carried smoke from the Amazonian wildfires, 2,700-kilometers away. “During Bolsonaro’s presidency, over 33,000 km2 of the Amazon, the lungs of the planet, was destroyed – equivalent to the size of Taiwan island – and deforestation rates increased by 59.5%, outdoing any other presidency since satellite measurements began in 1988.”

As made evident in this sweeping description of events, the right is to try to suppress the new cultural narrative that is rising with the social-political project that arrived with Lula’s regime and support in mass civil society. “The workers, poor, and dispossessed – as the protagonists of history and politics. This political act is also a battle of ideas, a battle over culture, emotions, and the image.”