After Secretary of Culture’s Spectacular Meltdown, a New Twist in Brazil’s Culture Wars

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Column) It was a spectacularly absurd act of self-sabotage. The Special Secretary of Culture, Roberto Alvim, issued an official statement – in video form – ostensibly to announce the National Arts Award, which echoed a speech by former Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

As if to reinforce the fascist connection, a portion of the video was accompanied by music from Richard Wagner’s opera “Lohengrin,” a celebrated and formative musical favorite of Adolf Hitler. It’s even possible that Alvim had intentionally curated his appearance, seated in front of the Brazilian flag and an official portrait of the President, to evoke the image of the former Nazi leader.

The resulting furor was predictable. Alvim dismissed it as a “rhetorical coincidence” but argued that “the sentence itself is perfect” asserting “the passage speaks of heroic art and [is] deeply linked to the aspirations of the Brazilian people.”

President Bolsonaro described the event simply as “infeliz” (unfortunate). Olavo de Carvalho, widely admired by the current administration – and especially by those Alvim himself has appointed to leadership positions across the cultural arena – responded by suggesting “Roberto Alvim may not be very well in mind.”

Alvim, a former theatre director, has spoken publicly of a reborn dedication to Christianity that developed around 2017 as he recovered from a health scare related to a benign tumor. Shortly after his initial appointment to the Secretariat of Culture, he called upon “conservative artists” to create “a cultural war machine.”

In his short tenure at the head of the Secretariat, he made a series of bizarrely inappropriate – and overtly ideologically inspired – appointments to the cultural agencies under his aegis – which I have discussed in a previous column. Without doubt, Special Secretary Alvim relished his role as a frontline general in the President’s culture wars.

Yet, almost inevitably, in the wake of public reaction to the video, Alvim was summarily dismissed from his position as Special Secretary of Culture on January 17^th, 2020. Popular Brazilian actress Regina Duarte was subsequently offered the position.

After an unprecedented ten days of almost coquettish deliberation following President Bolsonaro’s courtship – a period both likened to that following a marriage proposal – yesterday Regina Duarte finally acceded to the President’s request that she replace Alvim at the head of the Special Secretariat for Culture.

The marriage simile was extended still further as the smiling Duarte left the Planalto Palace declaring “only now the proclamations will occur before the wedding.” A proclamation is a document issued by a Brazilian registry office when a bride and groom are about to enter a civil wedding.

Duarte has a long history in Brazilian television, film, and theatre and is perhaps best known for her role in 1971’s ‘Minha Doce Namorada’ (My Sweet Girlfriend) which earned her the sobriquet of “Brazil’s Sweetheart.” More recently she provoked controversy during the 2002 Presidential elections for her televised campaign spots opposing former President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers Party.

Reportedly a friend of the First Lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, the actress will become the fourth holder of the Culture portfolio – which has rapidly emerged as an increasingly pivotal and controversial position in the nascent government.

Last August then-secretary Henrique Pires stepped down after an imbroglio involving the cancellation of an LGBT-themed television series. Economist Roberto Braga was subsequently appointed to the position but moved to the head the Ministry of Education after two months and was replaced by Alvim.

Despite her popular renown, Duarte has no previous experience in government or public administration, and the President acknowledged that she will need people “with management” at her side and publicly guaranteed that she will have the freedom to “exchange whoever she wants” at the Secretariat.

Duarte has already invited Janica Silva, an evangelical pastor known as ‘Reverend Jane,’ currently serving as secretary of Cultural Diversity in the Bolsonaro administration, to be her Deputy Secretary. A vocal supporter of the President (and Alvim), Silva recently charged the Palestinian Embassy in Brasilia with ‘promoting and financing terrorism throughout Brazil.’

Given the bizarre appointments of the short-lived Alvim era and the doubt which must now surely adhere to his judgment, it remains to be seen whether Duarte intends to initiate a new wave of appointments at the nation’s cultural institutions to replace her predecessor’s chosen incumbents.

If nothing else, Alvim’s spectacular – seemingly fascist-inspired – meltdown, when added to the unorthodox and inexperienced nature of his replacement, suggests continued upheaval and uncertainty in the federally-funded cultural arena. It likely also foreshadows a new episode in this administration’s ideologically inspired war over what constitutes legitimate cultural representation in Brazil.