Culture: An economic, strategic, social and racial challenge

How much does the culture industry turn in our country? How much currency and movement does it bring to the economy? How much does it employ and, above all, what is its relevance in the Brazilian GDP? Where does Agro appear as the great hero and the spending ceiling to starve millions of people appears as a villain in this historic moment in which the culture of hate was placed in our midst?

The Ministry of Culture, scrapped in recent years by a government that has always been body and soul averse to Brazilian culture, has suffered the effects of public neglect added to the pandemic period.

The cultural sector was the first to close due to Covid-19, leaving millions of people to fend for themselves.

They were artists, producers, directors, basic professionals (such as lighting, camera, makeup, carpentry, assembly, etc.), directly impacting the entertainment industry — which, according to sector data, employs more than 5 million people in Brazil , directly and indirectly, being responsible for a significant portion of our GDP.

From an erudite presentation at the Municipal Theater to the carnival of large, medium and small Brazilian cities, to bars in bohemian neighborhoods or funk parties on the outskirts, this industry generates millions of jobs, income and directly influences the Brazilian character and personality abroad, making making our country known as one of the happiest and most welcoming places in the world, directly impacting all other businesses in the economy, starting with tourism.

Here you eat, dress and breathe culture, with this important asset influencing practically all areas of the country’s development.

This should be the focus of the Ministry of Culture in the coming years, the body that will be built from “almost nothing”, a land devastated by neglect; the lack of investment in a pandemic period that left the sector to its fate.

The numbers are frightening: according to industry data, more than 350,000 events stopped running in 2020. A third of companies closed. The impact was so great that not even the television industry was left out, dismissing hundreds of professionals from its production chain.

But as a famous phrase by the leading sociologist of the black movement Sueli Carneiro says: “nothing comes to blacks and blacks in Brazil with a kissed hand, the ball always comes square”.

And, in the midst of the challenge of rebuilding this house, this devastated land, the president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva summoned a woman, black and from Bahia, to one of the most worthy tasks of his government: to return the pride, joy and respect that the Brazilian had before him and the rest of the world.

Obviously, as expected, unlike any other white name indicated by the president, the future minister had her private, physical and legal life scrutinized, searched and exposed like never before, or, better, as has happened at other times when a person A black woman is summoned to a position like this, especially if there is some financial resource at stake, even if it is one of the smallest budgets in the Union.

Margareth Menezes, who will now have the biggest budget that culture has been able to obtain up to the present day, will also have the biggest task that the culture sector has had up to the present day: to put a destroyed Ministry on its feet, but also to rescue, through culture, something that only culture can do — and this is priceless — the pride of being Brazilian!