The PT presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defended today (1st) that culture should be treated as an investment. “You didn’t spend, you invested R$ 30 million in culture. This is the key change that we have to have and understand culture as an instrument of the Brazilian economy”, he said when participating in a meeting with artists at Teatro da Paz, in Belém (PA).
Lula highlighted the potential of the cultural sector to offer job opportunities that, according to him, could even exceed those of other sectors of the economy, such as industry. “Each time you summon a show, no matter how small, there are ten people fixing the sound, ten taking care of the electricity, ten drumming something. I think it generates a lot more jobs than the industries themselves. And it generates pleasure, it generates joy, it generates knowledge,” he added.
In addition to encouraging the sector, the candidate said he will create conditions for artists to benefit the most from the profits from cultural activities. “I have to transform culture into a highly profitable economic activity for those who do it”, he emphasized.
He again committed himself to the recreation of the Ministry of Culture and the establishment of state committees to take care of the issue.
The candidate also said that he intends to seek an understanding in the National Congress to give space to artists in the programming of regional television stations. “It is no longer possible, in the 21st century, for television stations, retransmitters of the headquarters that are normally in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, not to have state programming”, he said again, when criticizing the lack of local production.
“Why don’t you have a schedule with local artists for an afternoon or morning period. How many artists would we value? Why can’t the culture of that country be nationalized?” she added.
For Lula, the idea is to spread cultural manifestations that are currently restricted to their places of origin to other parts of Brazil and even other countries.
Click here and see the candidates schedule to the Presidency of the Republic for this Thursday (1st).
