Brazilian workers have used food and transport vouchers for decades. Now president Lula also wants to create a ‘culture voucher’, as more than 80 percent of the population still has no access to culture.

“The culture voucher will create possibilities for the poorest people to have access to culture, to buy books, CDs, DVDs, to go to the theatre, to the cinema”, emphasised president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday in his weekly radio program. “Besides working, besides raising their families and taking care of them, people need to have access to culture. It is extremely important that we facilitate this.”

Culture, alongside football, is one of Brazil’s visiting cards abroad. Brazilian music and cinema are known worldwide and the country also has a vibrant cultural production in theatre, dance, literature and the visual arts. In spite of that, statistics show that 92 percent of Brazilians have never been to a museum, 78 percent have never seen a ballet, only 14 percent of the population goes regularly to the movies and 90 percent of the cities have no theatres or cinemas. A situation described by the Brazilian minister of Culture, Juca Ferreira, as ‘cultural apartheid’.

Qualitative change
“Unfortunately Brazil has an exclusion, a cultural apartheid. The number of Brazilians that have access to culture is very small. It never reaches 20 percent. The only exception is the open television service. This means that, in 500 years, the country hasn’t managed to integrate its population into its cultural life. That’s why this mechanism now is an open door, a very important door, that will allow Brazilians to start going to museums, theatres, cinemas, to buy books, CDs, DVDs. This is going to change people’s lives qualitatively”, says minister Juca Ferreira.

The culture voucher will be a magnetic card with a nominal value of 50 reais (about 18 euros) a month. To give an idea, the average cost of a movie ticket in Brazil is 12 reais and a CD costs around 30 reais.

Workers with salaries of up to five times the minimum wage will pay only 10 percent back - 5 reais – for the voucher. Those with larger salaries will pay a higher percentage. The culture voucher will work, more or less, the same way as other vouchers that already exist in Brazil, such as the ‘food voucher’ and the ‘transport voucher’ – which are partly paid for by the employer (that can deduct most of the costs from government taxes), partly by the employee, and partly by the government.

Food for the spirit
The project also has an important economic aspect, as it can, potentially, bring an extra 7 billion reais (more than 2 billion euros) a year to the cultural sector.

“The culture voucher is probably our most important initiative because it will allow 12 to 14 million Brazilians to start going to the movies, to the theatre. It will work in a very simple way, like the food voucher, but instead of feeding the stomach it will feed the spirit”, comments minister Juca Ferreira.

Critics
But not everybody is happy with the proposal. Newspaper Folha de São Paulo published an editorial criticising it: “It is absolutely predictable that the public money, so scarce in a poor and uneducated land, will end up sponsoring shows and popular events with no educational content”, runs the editorial, that affirms not to be elitism not to want public money to be spent in “funk, country music and pagode (a kind of popular samba) concerts” and that the government would do better in spending the money in public schools.

Rodolfo Garcia Vasquez, director of the São Paulo-based theatre group Os Satyros, thinks that the culture voucher could end up being an ‘entertainment voucher’. “Not defining what is culture, the government can leave things too open for manifestations that are of pure entertainment and that are not culture”, he says, mentioning American blockbusters as an example.

The project for the culture voucher was signed by president Lula last week. The proposal was sent to the Brazilian congress as ‘urgent matter’ and it should be voted on in 40 days.

Photo: sambrazuca at Flickr