485491

2013
MCS35510.1177/0163443713485491Media, Culture & SocietySilveira et al.

Article

Media, Culture & Society

Backward march: the 35(5) 549­–564

© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0163443713485491
cultural policy in Brazil mcs.sagepub.com

Sergio Amadeu da Silveira

Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil

Murilo Bansi Machado

Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil

Rodrigo Tarchiani Savazoni

Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil

Abstract
The article analyses the turnaround in guidelines occurring in public policies for culture
in Brazil. This is placed in the context of the transition from the government of Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva to the Dilma Rousseff administration, including the end of the cycle
of shared leadership between Ministers Gilberto Gil (2003–8) and Juca Ferreira (2008–
10) and the beginning of Ana de Hollanda’s administration of the Ministry of Culture.
The analysis starts with evaluation of the inaugural speeches of Ministers Gil and Ana
de Hollanda as moments for the enunciation of their differing strategic perspectives. It
focuses on the consequences of their contrasting views in three spheres: (1) creative
economy; (2) copyright; (3) the Alive Culture program. The article concludes that, in a
continuing government program, Brazil is undergoing a reversal of cultural policy with
large-scale implications.

Keywords
cultural policies, copyright, creative economy, cultural diversity, digital culture

During the eight years of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s mandate as president (2003–10),
Brazilian public policies for culture were distinctive and notable, largely as a result of an

Corresponding author:
Sergio Amadeu da Silveira, Federal University of Santo André Brazil (UFABC), 5001 Avenida dos Estados,
Santo André 09.210-170, Brazil.
Email: samadeu@gmail.com

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550 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

‘imaginative and daring’ plan (Manevy, 2010: 103) pursued by Ministers Gilberto Gil
and Juca Ferreira. These public policies were oriented towards the democratization of
access to culture and the strengthening of cultural diversity, according to the transforma-
tions taking place in the digital society. When Dilma Rousseff was elected (supported by
Lula) in 2010 and nominated Ana de Hollanda as Minister of Culture, there was a com-
plete turnaround in the strategic orientation of these policies, re-establishing the group
that can be called the Brazilian ‘artistic class’1 at the center of the ministry’s concerns.
This resulted in an emphatic posture of opposition to the internet and digital culture. An
intense debate has since taken place in Brazilian society involving artists, intellectuals
and activists, who, for the most part, have expressed themselves as being unhappy with
the directions taken by the ministry. In fact, this dissatisfaction initially reached parts of
the Brazilian Worker’s Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT), President Dilma’s own
party, the party responsible for nominating Ana de Hollanda for the position of Minister
of Culture.
The aim of this article is to describe and analyze this turnaround in public policies for
culture, as well to demonstrate the consequences of this public battle over the direction
for cultural policy in Brazil. The account is based on analysis of articles and interviews
published by the media and through the internet. The research also involved direct obser-
vation – as the researchers took part in encounters and meetings where the ministry’s
leaders and civil society members were able to express their points of view – as well as
document analysis, based on studies produced by the Institute of Applied Economic
Research (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada – IPEA) and official data published
by the Ministry of Culture or obtained from databases held by different federal govern-
ment offices.
The article is also based on a panoramic analysis of three central issues for the devel-
opment of public policies for culture, issues which have become the main focus for the
debate: (1) policy for the creative or cultural economy; (2) copyright policy; and (3) the
policy of Cultural Hotspots. These themes were chosen because they are the main pillars
of the Lula government’s cultural policy. Observing how they were treated in Dilma’s
administration allows us to see clearly the ‘backwards march’ which took place. This
represents a directional change in the formulation and conception of public policies, as
well as in the strategic budget definitions concerning these three central areas.

Two discourses, two actions

Celina Souza defines public policy as ‘the field of knowledge that seeks, at the same
time, to “get the government into action” and/or to analyze that action (independent vari-
able), where necessary proposing changes in the course of actions (dependent variable)’
(Souza, 2006: 26).2 This all-encompassing and generic definition arises from several
fields, theories and analytical models that attempt to define and explore this area of the
state’s influence over society.
To investigate a specific area of public policy, it is important to highlight that its for-
mulation, in general, ‘takes place at the stage when democratic governments translate
their electoral promises and platforms into programs and actions that will produce results
or changes in the real world’, according to the perspective summarized by Celina Souza

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Silveira et al. 551

(2006: 26). It is precisely here that there is a need to examine the relationship between
electoral platforms and the actions taken by elected governments, since there may be
very little coherence or correspondence between them. In this specific case, the electoral
campaign of President Dilma stated a commitment to digital culture – with a reformula-
tion of the copyright law so as to guarantee ‘fair copy’. Nevertheless, the nomination of
Ana de Hollanda as Minister of Culture went against both the electoral speech and the
policy executed during the administration of her predecessor and main supporter. This
can be seen in the evidence that there were different views of leadership between the Gil/
Juca and the Ana de Hollanda administrations, evidence which can be found in an analy-
sis of the inaugural speeches of the two ministers.
In 2003, spurred on by the popular demand that elected Lula, Gilberto Gil took con-
trol of the Ministry of Culture and promised in his inaugural speech to transform the
ministry into ‘the home of all those who think about and invent Brazil’. After stating that
‘the cultural policy is a part of the policy of a society and a nation’, Gil delineated what
would become one of the main characteristics of his term and that of his successor: the
intention to contribute towards the transformation of Brazilian cultural policy by under-
taking ‘a kind of anthropological do-in’, massaging vital pressure points, momentarily
forgotten or sleeping, on the country’s cultural body. In other words, to bring alive the
old and stimulate the new (Gil, 2003).
This concept of cultural policy was developed by Gil through the 25 years before he
became minister, when he was involved in the creation of the Gregório de Mattos
Foundation, a kind of municipal culture board in the city of Salvador, Bahia. In the book
The Poet and the Politician, by Gilberto Gil and by the anthropologist Antonio Risério,
they describe the Boca de Brasa project, an activity that may be seen as the precursor of
Cultural Hotspots, as it brought a mobile stage infrastructure for holding shows to the
outskirts of the city of Salvador. The Boca de Brasa program was defined and delivered
in partnership with local artists and citizens:

This is what we’ve done: we stimulated the expression and organization of community
productions, enabling the exchange of cultural experiences amongst a variety of small
communities in Salvador, at the same time as, due to the mobile and multiple nature of the
work, and its repercussions amongst the public, we are able to diagnose and record phenomena
and trends, through mapping a reality in which our manifestations of culture come together. A
kind of do-in: massaging the cultural body of our city. (Risério and Gil, 1988: 241)

Gil went on to conclude his inaugural speech by announcing that the Ministry of
Culture, working within this policy, would be ‘the space for experimenting with new
directions’, of ‘adventure and daring’. In the years that followed, the musician-leader and
his partners, particularly the executive secretary and subsequent Minister of Culture,
Juca Ferreira, developed the thesis of cultural policy along three dimensions – symbolic,
civil and economic – which would constitute ( as noted by the literary critic Idelber
Avelar [2011]), a political-cultural project from the left-wing, without any precedent in
Brazilian history. To summarize, the idea of culture in three dimensions requires one to
bring together policies that promote the rights of citizens, with support and freedom for
artists, without abandoning stimuli for the cultural economy and the arts. This must be
done without subordinating one of these dimensions to the others. A good public policy,

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552 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

therefore, emerges from a permanent balance between the symbolic, the civil and the
economic.
Ana de Hollanda took on the ministry in 2011, with great expectations regarding how
she would deal with the legacy of her predecessors, whose term had made the Ministry
of Culture a true ‘house of all Brazilians’, especially because of the way the public poli-
cies established a focus on rural and urban groups, indigenous nations, descendants of
slaves, young people, cultural networks, agents of fashion, design and architecture, with-
out abandoning the recognized arts and the issues relating to listed buildings. In this way,
a balance was established between the needs of creators and the rights of the citizens to
access and use cultural products.
In her inaugural speech, however, Ana de Hollanda indicated that there would be,
from her administration onwards, a change of emphasis. If the Lula administration
gained recognition for having broadened the horizon and incorporated new segments,
her administration was to be marked by a clear commitment to ‘creativity’, with the
‘human and real figure of the person that creates’, thereby denoting a border between the
creators, on the one hand, and those who can only seek consumption or appreciation of
the cultural product, on the other: ‘From this moment, when I take over the Ministry of
Culture, each artist, each Brazilian creator can be sure of one thing: my heart is beating
for them. And my heart will manifest itself in programs, projects and actions’ (Hollanda,
2011). At the end of her speech, in attempt to further underscore the message, the first
woman to become Minister of Culture in the history of Brazil formulated the definitive
sentence: ‘There is no art without the “artist”.’ This was the clue which indicated the
dismantling of a policy based on a balance between the dimensions of citizenship, sym-
bolism and economics, a balance which was inherent to the previous administration. In
March 2012, this approach was criticized by some of the most important Brazilian intel-
lectuals in a manifesto published in newspapers and on many websites.3 In the manifesto,
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Suely Rolnik, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Laymert
Garcia dos Santos, among others, stated:

The mere celebration of a ‘culture’ conceived as a symbolic surplus handed to renowned

professionals from the entertainment industry certainly cannot replace the active awareness of
the central role that the creative workforce play in the scenario of the new capitalist regime.
Nowadays, MinC [Ministry of Culture] is unaware of the financial accumulation systems, the
unilateral corporation gains with copyright.

Although Hollanda had explicitly declared that she would not revoke processes
undertaken during the Lula administration, the way her commitment to a portion of
the artistic class was manifested led to some distrust – from groups who were politi-
cally engaged during the Gil–Juca era – that the country could undergo a return to
individual ‘clientelism’, which is, as described by Marilena Chauí (1995: 81), the
‘traditional manner’ in which cultural producers and agents of the elite relate to the
state, forming a ‘great service desk of subsidies and financial sponsorship’. In her
first public appearance, Ana de Hollanda offered a partial and false reading of the
abandonment of artists during the Gil–Juca administration, thus by implication delin-
eating the principal guidelines of her own approach. An article that expresses this
view, echoed by the minister in her inaugural speech, was written by the composer

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Silveira et al. 553

Fernando Brant (2012), in O Globo, entitled ‘Authors not admitted to the Broadband
Minister’s Ball’.

The victory of economy over culture?

The first proposal by Ana de Hollanda, one month after taking over as minister, was the
creation of a creative economy Secretariat, with a post which came to be occupied by
the researcher and former Secretary of Culture at Ceará state, Cláudia Leitão. Giving
emphasis to the economic aspects, Ana de Hollanda was aligned, initially, with the
majority of Dilma’s government, which was marked, in the first year of office, by a
more economy-oriented view of national issues. In an interview for the newspaper
Brasil Econômico,4 the minister highlighted the need to support ‘creative industries’,
thus bringing the Brazilian plan closer to a conceptual approach adopted by some inter-
national bodies (Unctad, 2010) and by associated intellectuals, essentially transnational
cultural industries. The Secretariat of Creative Economy was asked to put together a
sector-wide plan, launched in September 2011, with the first design of a cultural public
policy (strategic view), some guidelines and a few specific lines of action. According to
the report, the creative economy is today responsible for a 2.84% contribution to gross
domestic product (GDP) in Brazil. It is estimated that the sector has grown, on average,
6.13% per year over the previous five years, overtaking the average growth of the econ-
omy, which was 4.3%. The main proposal of the Creative Economy Plan is the creation
of a federal program called Creative Brazil (Brasil Criativo), which brings together
intersection programs and actions responsible for supporting creative agents in the
country. However, until May 2012, when this article was written, the Ministry of Culture
announced, as a complement to this plan, only the holding of a registration process to
identify research and creative initiatives in the country – an extremely ‘timid’ approach
compared to the ambition presented in the document.
The Brazilian Creative Economy Plan proposes articulation on four pillars: cultural
diversity, sustainability, innovation and social inclusion. It further states that creative
economy actions must complement the Brazil Without Poverty (Brasil Sem Miséria)
program, the main program announced by President Dilma to eradicate poverty in Brazil
over the next four years. The document also lists five challenges: (1) to capture informa-
tion and data within the creative economy field; (2) to articulate and stimulate the growth
of creative enterprises; (3) to educate for creative competences; (4) to provide infrastruc-
ture for creation, production, distribution/circulation and consumption/appreciation of
creative goods and services; (5) to create/adapt legal benchmarks for creative sectors.
At no point does the plan mention initiatives that were designed during Lula’s govern-
ment, thus associating itself with an opposition rhetoric, which marked the first days of
the Hollanda administration at the Ministry of Culture. The plan omits to note, for exam-
ple, that during the eight years of the Lula era, the cultural economy was one of the three
strategic dimensions of public policy implemented by the Gil/Juca administration, as
mentioned above. It was at that time that the first efficient indicators concerning the
cultural economy in Brazil came into being, with the organization of the National System
for Cultural Information and Indicators (SNIIC). The importance of cultural manifesta-
tions that historically were not the subject of Brazilian government policy has also come

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554 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

to be noticed: handicrafts, architecture, fashion, design, computer games and products of

digital culture. Beyond the rhetorical change in terminology from ‘cultural economy’ to
‘creative economy’, it is hard to identify anything different about what is being proposed
by the new administration in relation to the previous one – even more so when the
advances of the previous decade are not mentioned in a study that seeks to guide the
actions of the current administration.
As noted by Alfredo Manevy (ex-Secretary for Cultural Policy in the Gil adminis-
tration and Executive Secretary in the Juca era), in a paper entitled ‘Ten command-
ments of the Ministry of Culture in the Gil and Juca administrations’, the policy for
cultural economy resulted in the creation of a sector and a specific fund for culture
aimed at fields such as animation, music and the creation of movie theaters by the
National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES) (Manevy, 2010).
Furthermore, the National Congress agreed to insert cultural producers in the tax
exemption program known as SIMPLES, which reduced taxation for cultural enter-
prises from 17.5% to 6% on average, potentially benefiting more than 300,000 institu-
tions. These were isolated actions that, although not articulated in a program with a
central narrative, made a fundamental contribution to strengthening the economy of
the cultural sector.
One additional difficulty of the proposal made in the Hollanda plan consists in the fact
that the term ‘creative economy’ is not clearly defined. For the United Nations, ‘there is
no single definition for creative economy’ (see Unctad, 2001). Within the Brazilian
Ministry of Culture’s Creative Economy Plan, the expression suffers from ‘ambiguity
and vagueness’. The economist Ana Carla Fonseca Reis, author of countless papers on
the topic, and one of the consultants for the UN document and the Brazilian plan, high-
lights the ‘nebulous boundaries of creative economy’ in an article published by the
Creative Economy Secretariat.

In the view of the author of this article, creative economy fuses the borders between cultural
economy and knowledge economy, encompassing the totality of the former and part of the
latter – specifically that which encapsulates symbolic contents, such as leisure software,
animation and applications, which reveal a given way of thinking, profoundly molded by
cultural aspects. Some voices will say that everything in this group of sectors is characteristic
of a local culture – but the same could be argued regarding publishing or music sectors.
(Ministry of Culture, 2011: 76)

Although it seeks to identify an all-encompassing and definitive concept, the Brazilian

plan also fails to reach a conclusion. It even states, at one point, that creative economy is
all ‘the economy of the intangible, the symbolic’. Can we therefore accept that all the
economy generated from genetic decoding, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, to give
only examples, would belong to the creative economy? When one speaks of the creative
economy, what specific sectors of immaterial production are taking benefit? Does this
creative economy influence the macro-economy and other economy sectors?
The result is that, instead of the clear program proposed for the development of public
policies for culture generated during Lula’s government – a program based, as noted
earlier, on three associated, interdependent and articulated dimensions (symbolic, citi-
zenship and economic dimensions) – Dilma’s government presented an ‘ambiguous and

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Silveira et al. 555

vague’ view of creative economy, the immediate effect of which was to reduce the opera-
tional area of the Ministry of Culture.
Furthermore, in practice, the main actions to produce a true transformation in Brazil’s
cultural economy – (1) approval of a new legal benchmark for funding culture; (2)
approval of a new legal benchmark for copyright; (3) approval of the Cultural Voucher
(Vale Cultura) Project; and (4) approval of PEC-150 (Proposal of Amendment of the
Constitution), which segregates 2% of the federal budget for financing culture – continue
to await approval in Congress, without receiving due attention by politicians.

The false opposition between artists and citizenship

The turnaround in orientation for cultural policies was not limited to a debate over eco-
nomic views, but also reached the programs intended to stimulate rights and cultural citi-
zenship – including the ‘Culture, Education and Citizenship: Cultura Viva’ (Alive Culture)
program, of which the Cultural Hotspots project is the main initiative. The program was
based on the principle that, although inducing cultural processes, the state is not the agent
responsible for ‘making the culture’. It is the state’s responsibility, at the end of the day, to
create conditions and mechanisms for citizens not only to access symbolic products, but
also to produce and distribute their own cultural products, engaging with their local con-
text as active subjects in these processes (Freire et al., 2003).
Based on these principles, the Cultural Hotspots’ proposal was transformed into a pub-
lic open call for proposals aimed at civil society organizations which had been active for
at least two years, areas with a low supply of public services and involving underprivi-
leged populations or those in socially vulnerable situations. The organizations that were
selected (who thenceforth became the Cultural Hotspots), would articulate and promote
local actions. For that purpose, they would receive R$5000 per month, for three years.
Initially, the call for proposals required each Cultural Hotspot to house a digital mul-
timedia studio. Resources would be destined for acquisition of a ‘multimedia kit’: com-
puters connected to the internet, all equipped with free software, in addition to other
equipment for capturing and editing audio and video – camera, camcorder, mixing desk,
etc. The proposal was that communities included in the project would feel encouraged
both to produce digital content and disseminate it on the web (Turino, 2009). According
to a study undertaken by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA, 2011), at
the end of 2011, Brazil boasted around 3500 Cultural Hotspots during its implementation
phase, involving over 8.4 million people in more than 1000 towns throughout Brazil.
This first public policy for digital culture in Brazil, which would later evolve to
include the Cultural Poles and the national and regional Hotspots – within a network
called TEIA – placed emphasis not on the technological apparatus itself, but on the
potential for transformation associated with the possibility of cultural production and
dissemination on the internet, based on recognition and support for Brazilian cultural
diversity. The following observation was made by Gilberto Gil, in a seminar held two
years after the implementation of the policy, and recorded by the researcher Eliane Costa:

We cannot deprive local communities, whether traditional or otherwise, as well as artists and
cultural producers, of the possibility of migrating their symbolic production to the web, to the

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556 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

cyberspace. To ensure that the expression of ideas and artistic manifestations can take digital
formats and, furthermore, to guarantee that groups and individuals can create, innovate and
recreate artwork and products in cyberspace itself, public guarantees of universal access to the
world wide web are essential.… The culture of digital diversity is amplified by knowledge-
sharing practices, sharing of open technology and expansion of telecenters, meta-recycling
workshops, Cultural Hotspots. (Costa, 2011: 57–8)

When Gilberto Gil left the ministry, in mid-2008, neither the ‘Alive Culture’ pro-
gram nor the ‘Cultural Hotspots’ program had lost their relevance in the government of
Lula. Ferreira, who was executive secretary for the ministry until then, maintained the
same discourse and the same political will regarding this and other policies, as we
show later.
At first, the new minister seemed open to dialogue with the Cultural Hotspots and
willing to consolidate the Alive Culture program. Nevertheless, already in the first
months of her administration, Ana de Hollanda announced the unification of the Cultural
Citizenship and Cultural Diversity secretariats, which comprised the administrative
structure of the previous administration. She then nominated the journalist Marta Porto
to be the secretary, who took on the new department charged with responsibility to refor-
mulate the main program of cultural inclusion developed during Lula’s government. The
flow of dialogue between the ministry and social movements was broken. In order to
organize the relationship between government and social movements, the Cultural
Hotspots formed, in 2009, a National Forum of Cultural Hotspots, whose executive body
is the National Commission of Cultural Hotspots. This commission’s institutional role is
to supervise, advise on and promote the public policies of the Alive Culture program, but
it was completely disregarded by Ana de Hollanda when the minister radically rede-
signed this area of public policy.
In the first months of Ana de Hollanda’s administration, there was a view that it
would be necessary to assess the quality of the Alive Culture program and improve it
before expanding it. This position, however, generated considerable opposition
among the main supporters of the program in civil society. ‘What is being discussed
here is a dispute over schools of thought and political governance in response to the
argument about quality over quantity’, explains Ivana Bentes (2011), professor and
director of the School of Communication (ECO) at Rio de Janeiro Federal University,
in addition to being a member of the ECO Cultural Poles. Bentes argued that there is
no opposition between expanding the program and seeking to improve its quality. She
pointed to the budget cuts at the ministry and lack of interest in the Alive Culture
program, showing a cut of more than 70% therein and the indignation of the Cultural
Hotspots (Bentes, 2012).
Indeed, some figures published by the ministry itself support the criticisms made by
Bentes, which also echo the voices of most activists linked to the cause. As an example,
the Ministry of Culture budget, which reached R$2.2b at the end of 2010, was cut to
R$1.64b in the following year – which, contrary to the argument of film-maker Cacá
Diegues in an article published in the O Globo,5 is far from being a record sum. In addi-
tion, the Alive Culture program, which had received R$126m in 2010, received no more
than R$70m in 2011 (see Table 1). Bearing in mind that the probability is always that
there will be a larger budget in electoral years, if we remove the years 2006 and 2010

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Silveira et al. 557

Table 1.  Budget for the Alive Culture program during the Lula and Dilma’s eras.

Year Funds allocated (R$)*

2004 16m
2005 68m
2006 50m
2007 150m
2008 120m
2009 140m
2010 216m
2011 70m
2012 20m**

*Approximate values.
**Actually, the Alive Culture program is not listed on the investment budget of the Ministry of Culture.
Thus, theoretically, there are no funds provided for the program, but rather a sum of R$ 20m, aimed
at ‘strengthening spaces and Cultural Hotspots, and development and support of cultural networks and
circuits’.

(electoral years) from the analysis, it may be seen that, nevertheless, the year 2011 was
the worst year, in terms of budget, for the program.
Another factor pointing to a step backwards in relation to the program lies in the can-
cellation of calls for proposals that were already published, the suspension of payments
and the lack of new open calls for proposals. As an example, despite the approval of
projects and the dissemination of successful proposals in the Brazilian Federal Register,
in the year 2011, the calls for proposals related to the Alive School (from 2009) and Alive
Culture Agent (from 2009) projects, worth R$7000 to each beneficiary, were cancelled.
In the following year, it was the turn of the Areté call for proposals (from 2010), worth
R$4000. In the case of the Cultural Poles call for proposals, valued at approximately
R$14m in total, payment is not yet assured. In addition, until mid-May 2012, there had
been, under the Ana de Hollanda administration, no federal open call for proposals that
encompassed Cultural Hotspots.
One of the explanations commonly given to justify this scenario is that the bureau-
cratic processes for Alive Culture were far too outdated for such an innovative program
and, as a result, not easily adaptable the legislation – in this case specifically, Law 8666
(the Law of public administration tenders and contracts). This position is identified and
refuted by Alexandrisky (2012):

The motivation is to reject discourse which criminalizes the Program, due to a supposed
complexity in adapting it to the bureaucratic controls of Law 8666; reject the discourse that
creates insoluble problems that compromise continuity and/or expansion of the Program.…
Reject the discourse that appoints bureaucracy as defining public policy.… Beat those who say,
cynically, that the Program is ‘the greatest legacy of Lula’s government, but, “unfortunately”,
runs into old-fashioned, outdated, obsolete, confusing retrograde and chaotic legislation …’
which slows down the Brazilian state, under the false pretext of the need for control of public
money.… When we all know – since newspaper headlines do not let us forget – that, instead of
impeding corruption, the bureaucracy creates shadowy pathways for ‘seepage’ of funds from

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558 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

the National Treasury, under the shroud of ‘complex spreadsheets’, designed by ‘specialists’.
Now, please fill the mailboxes of this newspaper with responses to the question that is on
everyone’s lips: ‘What should change: the Program or the bureaucracy?’

However, even the Gil/Juca administration recognized these bureaucratic obstacles,

being aware of the need to overcome them. Manevy (2010: 114) refers to this issue and
highlights the challenges that lie ahead:

The program leaves us the challenge of modernizing the Brazilian state. This reflection does
not apply only to cultural administration: the state we took part in was not geared towards
comfortable partnerships with society. The legal instruments available for transfer of funds are
obsolete and – in terms of legitimate combating of corruption – they make the relationship with
most of society impracticable due to an excess of rigidity.… One of the main problems within
the Ministry of Culture, over the past eight years, has been the provision of a fast and effective
service for society, and the result is still considerably deficient.

From creative commons to favoring ECAD

As described at the beginning of this article, the emphasis of the new ministry upon
favoring the ‘artistic class’ was used as an argument to denote an antagonistic posture
towards the view that led to implementation of the Alive Culture program – for which it
was necessary to expand and democratize access to and production of culture (formulat-
ing networks for sharing), instead of allowing segregation in ghettos. This vision is
expressed in the ministry’s posture regarding the reformulation of the Brazilian copy-
right law, another sensitive topic that epitomizes the rupture at Ministry of Culture in
terms of the prevailing cultural policy since Lula’s era and the Gil/Juca’s administration.
Upon taking office as minister in January 2003, Gil began interacting with the copyright
industry, not only as a famous singer of Brazilian music himself but also as the main
public leader in the sphere of culture in Brazil. A few days after taking office, in a speech
given at the Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale (MIDEM) – the
main international fair of the recording industry – Gil already revealed signs of his inten-
tions regarding copyright policy, saying that ‘one cannot ignore the importance of the
market, but we must establish a dialogue between the market and other dimensions of
culture’ (Costa, 2011: 148). The minister would go on to defend a fair balance between
the protection of the authors and public access to information and knowledge.
At that time, when the internet and diverse digital technologies were already becom-
ing popular in Brazil, the recording industry, as well as the entire cultural industry, began
to decline, as mentioned by Dias (2006). This is because prior to digitalization of content
both artists and the general public saw themselves becoming hostages of this industry,
also called the intermediation industry. Artists had to submit their work thereto, inevita-
bly relinquishing their copyrights to the industry, at the same time as the public could
only resort to the cultural industry for acquisition of cultural products. With the advance
of digital technologies for reproduction and sharing, this intermediation industry and its
business model ceased to be indispensable, which has led to a steep drop in revenue.
It was at MIDEM, in 2003, that Gilberto Gil met John Perry Barlow, one of the found-
ers of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated, among other things,

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Silveira et al. 559

to the defense of freedom of expression on the internet. Since the 1990s, Barlow also
became well known for defending changes to the copyright law in order to deal with the
inevitable obstacles that arose after the advent of social networks. Thenceforth, Gil
began to form a considerable network of contacts, and held meetings and discussions to
deal with this topic. This network would become one of the most cherished and sensitive
features of his administration.
This decision gains further relevance when one considers that Brazil has one of the
most outdated and restrictive copyright legislation in existence, according to Lemos
et al. (2011), Souza (2011) and others. The current legislation, dating from 1998, did
not consider the transformations brought by the internet and the popularization of
computers already under way at that time and mainly served the interests of two
groups: associations that work only for their own benefit (such as associations of
publishing houses and composers) on the one hand, and groups interested in liberali-
zation of trade under the efforts of the recently established World Trade Organization
(WTO) on the other. In order to understand the restrictiveness of this law, here are two
examples: (1) in Brazil, works such as books and pieces of music can only enter pub-
lic ownership (free of copyright) 70 years after the death of their author/composer;
and (2) if the law is interpreted in its strictest form, Brazilian citizens are forbidden to
transfer to their personal computers or mp3 players any music they may have acquired,
for example, by buying a CD in a physical store. ‘Brazilian Law is one of the most
restrictive in the world.… On the other hand, there is a series of different collective
interests in society, which involve preservation of the cultural property of a nation,
access to knowledge, access to communication, the right to culture’, points out Souza
(2011). Minister Gil understood that it would not be possible to promote and widely
develop culture without at least discussing this legislation. For this reason, he began
conducting in 2003 a study on the issue of copyright in several countries around the
world.
In that same year, Gil took part in the Internet Law Program Brasil conference (I-Law),
bringing together several specialists from the field. At this event he met Lawrence Lessig,
creator of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses. It was during this event that Brazil came
to formally adhere to the CC movement, leading this debate on a worldwide level and
showing how to legalize practices such as copying, redistributing and remixing, so com-
monplace on the worldwide web, and which could otherwise have transformed a whole
generation of web-surfers into criminals. One year after leading Brazil to adherence to
CC, Gilberto Gil licensed his song ‘Oslodum’ by this method, during the 5th International
Free Software Festival (FISL) in Porto Alegre.
In addition, in an attempt to formalize the advances after years of debates and discus-
sions, the Ministry of Culture proposed, in 2012, under the leadership of Juca Ferreira,
an alteration in copyright legislation in Brazil, suggesting the necessity to modernize it
to include the possibility of making copies of copyrighted material for private use, as an
example; as well the creation of a public body (the Brazilian Copyright Institute – IBDA)
to take care of balancing and monitoring each sector interested in this topic – especially
the Central Office for Copyright and Distribution (ECAD), an institution that, although
obliged by law to be accountable to the state, is constantly the target of accusations con-
cerning irregularities.

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560 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

The bill for a new copyrights law was subjected to a public consultation online, in an
open and collaborative process of review, and received more than 7800 contributions,
subsequently analyzed by the Ministry of Culture.
Initially, in 2011, when Ana de Hollanda took over the ministry, she changed the dis-
course that had been adopted during the Gil/Juca administration by emphasizing the
‘artistic class’, as noted above. Furthermore, surprising activists and all those who were
involved in the cultural policy of Lula’s government, 20 days after taking office, she had
the Creative Commons label removed from the ministry site. The footnote used before
on the website (‘The content of this site is published under a Creative Commons License’)
was substituted by another statement (‘License for use: The content of this site, produced
by the Ministry of Culture, may be reproduced, provided the source is given’). The new
sentence represents no legal security for users and conflicts with the country’s copyright
law. In a press conference, Ana de Hollanda declared that it was ‘inappropriate’ to use
CC to ‘advertise a private entity that offers a service’, since ‘there was no contract that
authorized this’. At the same time, however, the ministry kept brands of North American
enterprises on their webpage, such as YouTube, which demonstrates a lack of transpar-
ency in the official argument.
In the broader debate over copyright, the minister has, thus far, had to respond to severe
criticism about her alleged connection with ECAD – the arch-enemy of copyright law
reform. As an example, in February 2011 Ana de Hollanda gave serious indications that she
would abort the plans of Gil and Juca for the aforementioned reform. The minister dismissed
the civil servant Marcos Souza, one of the most important defenders of the reformulation of
the law from the Directorship of Intellectual Property Rights (DDI) at the Ministry of
Culture, the body responsible for coordinating the reform. A civil servant from the Federal
Attorney’s Office, Márcia Regina Barbosa, was nominated for his position. Based on some
of her administrative acts, activists alleged she had ties to Hildebrando Pontes Neto, former-
President of the National Copyright Council (CNDA), the body responsible for regulating
the sector between 1973 and 1990, and now one of ECAD’s lawyers.6
With regard to the copyright reform bill, despite the wide-reaching debate that arose
and the fact it was totally formatted by the previous administration, the new minister
opted to revise it, having forwarded the final version to central government only at the
end of October 2011. The new project, which was kept under wraps by the Ministry of
Culture itself, is 80% faithful to the original formatted under the Juca Ferreira adminis-
tration, but diverges from it on key points.
One of these diversions relates to inspection of duty collection entities, such as ECAD.
The new bill provides for less tax inspection of these societies, which lack transparency
and have been targeted for investigation by the authorities. Another sensitive issue relates
to charging for copyrights proportionally to the use of the works themselves. Currently,
without any legally defined criteria, those using just one item pay for the entire catalogue
of a given musical association, since the duties are levied through sampling. In the copy-
rights reform bill proposed by the Ministry of Culture in 2010, proportional taxation was
already defined. However, in the current version of the bill, as proposed by the Ministry
of Culture in 2011, it is said that sampling should only occur if it is ‘technically and
economically’ viable, and the responsible entity for evaluating this condition of viability
is ECAD itself.

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Silveira et al. 561

Such reformulations, however, go against the final report No. 22 approved during the
parliamentary commission of inquiry about ECAD, conducted by the Brazilian Senate.
The text recognizes that the current copyright law (9.610/98) ‘urgently requires reforms’,
but expressly recommends that the authorities expand inspection of entities like ECAD:

[Recommendations to the authorities] 14. Send to the Brazilian Congress, as a matter of

constitutional urgency (CF, art. 64, § 1o), the Bill related to the reform of Copyrights Law
(LDA), under the Inter-ministerial Intellectual Property Group (GIPI), currently pending
approval by central government.
15. Create within the Ministry of Justice, the National Secretariat for Copyrights – SNDA and
the National Copyright Council – CNDA, administrative structures with jurisdiction to monitor
and mediate conflicts and to inspect entities for collective management of copyrights. We
further recommend that, after the creation of the Secretariat and the Council, that the Ministry
of Justice conduct a serious debate with society regarding the pertinence of the creation of an
autonomous, self-governing body, with jurisdiction to pass judgment on collective management
of copyrights.
16. That the administrative structure mentioned above has access to budget, funds, physical
infrastructure and qualified personnel to perform regulation, mediation and inspection of
bodies that collectively manage copyrights.
17. That a transparency portal is created, containing information on revenue and expenses of
these bodies for collective management of copyrights.
18. That an ombudsman is created for the sole purpose of receiving complaints from copyrights’
holders and protected work users [our highlights]. (ECAD, 2012: 1046, emphasis added)

Finally, a recent event helps one to understand the rupture represented by the Ana de
Hollanda administration at the Ministry of Culture. On 26 April 2012, the ministry pub-
lished a official release7 explicitly celebrating International Intellectual Property Day. In
the message, signed by the minister, there is a special mention of copyright. According
to Hollanda:

amongst … subjects that are part of Intellectual Property, copyrights exercise the important role
of enabling the coexistence of diverse segments involved in the chain of cultural production in
the society, recognizing and valuing cultural production and the central role of the creator.

Final considerations
A recurrent view of those who criticize the current administration for the Ministry of
Culture is that the government has no plan for culture. Brazil is currently going through
a clear change of emphasis in the macro-guidelines for cultural public policy. It has
ceased its attempts to reach the society as a whole, and has begun to favor the cultural
intermediation industry, in a return of the ‘individual clientelism’ that historically favors
a privileged circle of ‘creators’ or ‘the artistic class’. The decision to reverse cultural
policy without listening to society is one of the main factors in the dissatisfaction
expressed by several sectors in the Brazilian cultural field, and it is at the core of a per-
sistent dispute regarding the maintenance of a specific interest group in power.

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562 Media, Culture & Society 35(5)

As described by the researcher and current Secretary of Culture for the State of
Bahia, Albino Rubin, one of the most important formulators of the cultural public
policy designed by the Worker’s Party (PT) for the Gil/Ferreira administration, stud-
ies on cultural public policy in Brazil are hardly panoramic. In an attempt to summa-
rize them, however, he observes that Brazil is a victim of ‘three sad traditions’:
absenteeism, authoritarianism and instability (Rubin, 2010). If during Lula’s govern-
ment it was possible to overcome absenteeism and authoritarianism, the same could
not be said about instability, given the current administration’s decision to break with
the general direction for cultural public policies that were already being implemented
in Brazil.8
The adoption of an opposition rhetoric – which is not trivial, since Dilma’s administra-
tion was expected to implement continuity with former government policy – produced an
institutional crisis that weakened the Ministry of Culture, resulting in a negative impact on
all who are involved in these arrangements, something that only benefits the entertain-
ment industry itself, represented by large international recording labels and by the most
important film studios. In an article where she remembers her activity as Secretary of
Culture for the city of São Paulo from 1988 to 1992, the Brazilian philosopher Marilena
Chauí, a relevant personality in the cultural field inside the Brazilian Worker’s Party and
a critic of Ana de Hollanda’s administration, states that a cultural policy must seek a trans-
formation in the political culture of a society, expanding and strengthening democracy:
‘From the point of view of the political culture, it was about encouraging forms of self-
organization of society and, above all, the less privileged segments of society, creating a
feeling and reality of participatory citizenship’ (Chauí, 1995: 71).
Gil and Juca, with their anthropological ‘do-in’, a view of cultural public policy that
strengthened Cultural Hotspots, digital culture networks, young activists from all artistic
segments, indigenous artists and descendants of African slaves, among so many others,
fulfilled the mission outlined by Chauí and created a considerable change in Brazilian
cultural public policy. Furthermore, they embraced established artists through public
policies that gave support and created an infrastructure for culture. Hollanda’s adminis-
tration reinforced the emphasis on the defense of the cultural industry – a program which
turned around the public policies already being implemented. This carries the risk of
leading Brazil back into the stagnation of the twentieth century.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. The ‘artistic class’ referred to by Ana de Hollanda is a small group of artists, mostly from
Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and São Paulo, united, in the case of music, around entities
that comprise the Central Office for Fundraising and Distribution (ECAD). In the case of
cinema, they are film-makers associated with ‘big cinema’ (producers and directors linked to

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Silveira et al. 563

the companies Globo and Motion Pictures Association of America – MPAA), whose better-
known members include the producer Luiz Carlos Barreto and the film-maker Cacá Dieguez.
2. All translations from sources in Portuguese are by the authors.
3. Available at: http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/arteelazer,despreparo-e-dolorosamente-
evidente-dizem-intelectuais-sobre-gestao-do-minc,850226,0.htm (accessed 4 May 2012).
4. Available at: http://www.culturaemercado.com.br/politica/ana-de-hollanda-fala-sobre-a-sec-
retaria-de-economia-criativa (accessed 4 May 2012).
5. Cf. ‘Culture is the soul of a nation’, available at: http://www.substantivoplural.com.br/a-
cultura-e-a-alma-de-um-povo (accessed 4 May 2012).
6. As a result of non-transparent leadership, since there is no accountability regarding what is
received and what is passed on to authors, ECAD was investigated by a parliamentary com-
mission in the Brazilian Senate and another at the Rio de Janeiro City Hall. The final report
from the inquiry, approved in April 2012, calls for the indictment of 15 people, members
of the upper echelons of the entity and leaders of several associations that make up ECAD.
Among the accusations of irregularities pointed out the by the parliamentary commission are
illegal acquisition of funds, fraud in auditing, conspiracy and illicit accumulation of wealth.
The entire report is available at: http://www.senado.gov.br/atividade/comissoes/comissao.
asp?com=1566&origem=SF (accessed 4 May 2012).
7. Available at: http://www.cultura.gov.br/site/2012/04/26/dia-internacional-da-propriedade-
intelectual (accessed 4 May 2012).
8. The consolidated project of the Gil and Juca administrations was very well summarized by
Alfredo Manevy (2010): (1) the broad definition of culture alongside its perception as a stra-
tegic social terrain for the future of the country; (2) culture as a basic right and need; (3)
development of Brazilian cultural diversity; (4) valuing traditional, indigenous and slave-
descendant cultures as a decisive part of the future of Brazil; (5) development of cultural
economy policy, without forgetting the symbolic and civil dimensions; (6) updating of cop-
yright legislation; (7) modernization of cultural incentives policy; (8) central role of civil
society as a concept recognized within the framework of state action; (9) understanding and
reassertion of the role for the state in culture; (10) defense of the public budget.

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Addendum
In late 2012, Ana de Hollanda resigned and was replaced by Marta Suplicy, former mayor of São
Paulo. Although it is still early days, her first acts in the Ministry of Culture seem to be to recover
aspects of the the project and programs formulated during the period of Gilberto Gil and Juca
Ferreira. However, the differences and tensions outlined in this article will continue to be active in
the formation of Cultural Policy.

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