Abstract
This chapter analyzes, on the one hand, the construction of an institutional arrangement of policies on intangible heritage of Brazilian culture. On the other hand, it maps the disputes that emerge from implementing these policies from a case study on the patrimonialization of the religious use of ayahuasca in Brazil. Based on analyzing theses, dissertations, and articles on cultural heritage in Brazil, in the first part of the study, we describe the initial moment of developing public policies in the country. Then, using interviews, institutional documents from the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional—IPHAN (National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage) and national legislation, we made an analysis of the emerging policies aimed at intangible cultural heritage. Based on a literature review, interviews with actors involved in the process and institutional documents produced by ayahuasca groups, the following sections map the disputes surrounding the process of recognizing the religious use of ayahuasca as an intangible heritage of Brazilian culture. Thus, the present work addresses two key objectives: (1) Apprehending the construction and consolidation of a right from the convergence of various social, historical and institutional processes that occur at different levels and with different temporalities; (2) Showing evidence that the subsequent process of implementing such rights by formulating public policies can give rise to the emergence of a new set of dynamics, tensions and unforeseen claims in the law.
This chapter is the result of postdoctoral research that was funded by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Grant Number: 2019/11202-0.
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Notes
- 1.
Ayahuasca, Yagé, Santo Daime, Vegetal, Hoasca, Nixi Pae, Caapi are some of the main names by which the drink produced from two plants native to the Amazon region is known, the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of a bush, the Psychothrya viridis. Ayahuasca has gained notoriety in Brazil and internationally, mainly because it contains, among other psychoactive properties, DMT (n,n-dimethyltryptamine), a controlled substance under the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances.
- 2.
IPHAN was created shortly after the coup d’état that started the dictatorial regime known as Estado Novo (New State), under the command of Getúlio Vargas. According to Sala (1990), IPHAN, which was initially linked to the Ministry of Education and Health, was part of a broader political project whose ambitions were to make Catholicism and the cult of the country’s political leaders the symbolic foundations of a strong and centralized national State. For a contemporary discussion on moral majority and the role of Christianism in Brazilian society, see Bortolin (in this volume).
- 3.
Aloísio Sérgio Barbosa Magalhães was born in Recife in 1927 and died in 1982. In 1950, he graduated in Law from the Federal University of Pernambuco and studied Museology at the Louvre Museum School in Paris. His role in heritage policies gained ground from the 1970s, when the CNRC began its work at the University of Brasília, under his coordination. The relevance of Magalhaes’ trajectory is also highlighted in the institutional narrative of IPHAN, which reaffirms the central role of his work in highlighting the value of popular manifestations in the country (IPHAN 2015, available at http://portal.iphan.gov.br/noticias/detalhes/3216, accessed on 04/04/2020). For an analysis on the CNRC formation and policies, see Londres (2000).
- 4.
In interviews, Arantes (2008, 2009, 2015) points out that his trajectory crossed at different times with the theme of cultural heritage. The anthropologist highlights his participation in one of the first inventories promoted by IPHAN, through the CNRC, the Ecological and Cultural Survey Project for the region of Lagoas Mundaú and Manguaba (PLEC), in Maceió, carried out in 1976. In 1983, he became head of the Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage of the State of São Paulo (CONDEPHAAT). Arantes also emphasizes his role as representative of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (ABA) during the National Constituent Assembly, in which he helped IPHAN technicians to write the chapter on culture, especially in articles 215 and 216. In 2003, he was invited to preside over IPHAN.
- 5.
Arantes refers to social movements that emerged on the Brazilian political scene during the decline of the military dictatorial regime and the beginning of the country’s democratic transition, which played a decisive role in the struggle for social, political and cultural rights. Indeed, the 1980s in Brazil were marked by the mobilization of social movements that broke out on the political landscape at the end of the 1970s. The Comunidades Eclesiais de Base – CEBs (Ecclesial Base Communities), influenced by Liberation Theology, gave rise to social movements for transport and housing. Workers set up trade union centers again from the Associação Nacional de Movimentos Populares e Sindicais – ANAMPOS (National Association of Popular and Trade Union Movements), and the Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores – CGT (General Confederation of Workers) and the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) (United Workers Front) were created. In the countryside, the Movimento de Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) emerged (Gohn 2000). There was a significant expansion of debates on the indigenous issue, and NGOs and the indigenous associations were created in various parts of Brazil (Silva 2018a). The period was also marked by several initiatives of the black movement, such as the creation of cultural centers and the strengthening of the black press. In 1978, the Movimento Negro Unificado (Unified Black Movement) was founded, contributing to the advancement of the anti-racist agenda (Domingues 2007). The LGBT movement was also present in the second half of the 1970s, after associations and NGOs were created aiming to ensure rights related to free sexual orientation (Facchini 2003).
- 6.
Article 215 of the section “On culture” stipulates the guarantee, by the Brazilian State, of the full exercise of cultural rights and the access to sources of national culture, providing support and encouragement to the appreciation and dissemination of Brazilian cultural manifestations. The article also establishes the duty of the State to protect “manifestations of popular, indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures, and those of other groups participating in the national civilizing process” (Brasil 1988, p. 126). Article 216 establishes for the first time the notion of “intangible heritage,” including forms of expression, ways of creating, doing and living that serve as references to the identity and memory of the different groups that form Brazilian society.
- 7.
Regarding the creation of this new instrument, IPHAN states: “The identification of new cultural assets, representative of different social groups, and the construction of instruments and methods suitable for their research and valorization have been discussed for a long time. Especially after the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, which incorporates the anthropological (and much more democratic) vision of culture and the notions of cultural asset, cultural dynamics and cultural reference, already adopted and experimented by the CNRC and proMemoria” (Brasil 2000b, p. 7, emphasis added).
- 8.
According to Arantes (2015, p. 242): “The instrument, as a whole, was conceived from two notions. On the one hand, the notion of totality with regard to social practices, in the Maussian sense of the term; and, on the other hand, the idea of variation, that is, that a structure can assume different configurations in different contexts, with the occurrence of variants being a structural principle of the reality studied, and the various observed phenomena, possible embodiments of these same basic principles.”
- 9.
As Dias (2020, p. 168) points out, the theme of “cultural policies” acquired centrality in the scope of UNESCO, especially from the 1960s onwards, marking the beginning of growing concern to articulate the issues of culture and development. One of the landmarks of this process was the Declaration sur les droits culturels en tant que droits de l’homme from 1970, which built an isonomy between the work of the UN and that carried out by UNESCO, postulating the existence of cultural rights and the perspective of its guarantee and defense, supported by an expanded grammar of human rights. According to Dias, there has been, since then, a clear intention by UNESCO to coordinate and expand cultural policies in its member nations.
- 10.
The Convention established a set of parameters and responsibilities, both on the part of civil society and national States, regarding the recognition of intangible cultural heritage (UNESCO 2003, p. 3).
- 11.
The Centro Iluminação Cristã Luz Universal - CICLU-Alto Santo (Universal Light Christian Center) is the first Santo Daime church, founded by Raimundo Irineu Serra, in the 1930s. The CICLU-Alto is restricted to its headquarters in Rio Branco.
- 12.
Historian and archaeologist, he was one of the proponents of the patrimonialization request sent to IPHAN. He integrated the public sector in cultural heritage in the State of Acre, working for 2 years at the Fundação Garibaldi Brasil and then, for 6 years, at the Department of Historical Heritage of the State Government and the Cultural Foundation of the State. He has been Director-President of the Municipal Culture Foundation of Rio Branco since 2005.
- 13.
Interview with Beatriz Labate held on July 10, 2009. Available at: https://www.bialabate.net/texts/ayahuasca-como-patrimonio-imaterial-da-cultura-brasileira, accessed on 05/16/2018.
- 14.
Among these actors, it is worth mentioning the State Representative Perpétua Almeida from the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB); journalist Antônio Alves, from CICLU-Alto Santo, and a member of the Workers’ Party (PT) and president of the Elias Mansour Culture and Communication Foundation (FEM); historian Marcos Vinícius Neves (cited above), the federal judge Jair Facundes, a friend of CICLU, among others (Assis and Rodrigues 2017). It is from this narrowing of political alliances that the “Thematic Chamber of Ayahuasqueira Cultures” was created in 2008, whose meetings included representatives from CICLU-Alto Santo, Barquinha and UDV.
- 15.
According to IPHAN: “The Advisory Board urged clarification on the cultural expression in question and the inclusion of indigenous people in the process, considering the fact that ayahuasca tea is knowledge originating from indigenous peoples and that, therefore, they could see the registration of tea linked to other groups as a usurpation of their knowledge” (Iphan apud Barros 2016, p. 248).
- 16.
According to Labate and Assis (2018, p. 224): “In October 2014, IPHAN’s recommendations on the inventory were sent to its technical team, which proceeded to re-elaborate the report, which in turn corresponds to the first of the three stages of the register process. The Final Report of this stage, with a qualitative analysis that addressed the social, pharmacological, legal and religious aspects of ayahuasca, was completed in 2015, and presented in the city of Rio Branco, Acre on August 22, 2017. However, this has not yet identified which cultural assets would be registered for patrimonialization”. So far, we have not had access to the report.
- 17.
It is not uncommon for policies on intangible heritage to involve processes of social legitimation through the symbolic positivization of stigmatized practices, such as the practice of producing and selling acarajé in Bahia. Historically persecuted and marginalized until the mid-twentieth century, it has become a Brazilian intangible cultural heritage, and symbol of Bahian cuisine and traditional culture (Reinhardt 2018). Similarly, the use of ayahuasca moved between different stigmas, from macumba and charlatanism in the first half of the twentieth century, to its association with drug consumption in recent decades (Goulart 2008).
- 18.
The Ayahuasca groups from Acre that organized the seminar were invited to the meeting in Rio de Janeiro, but refused to participate.
- 19.
According to Labate and Goulart (2016, p. 7) the creation of a new classification arrangement is an important novelty in this debate, initiating a distinction between “originators,” “traditional” and “eclectic” segments. The category “originators” encompasses the various indigenous ethnic groups that consume ayahuasca. The “traditional” category concerns the “three founding masters” of the three “ayahuasca branches,” Santo Daime (CICLU-Alto Santo), Barquinha and UDV, which express traditional Amazonian culture, however, adopting a markedly Christian stance. The “eclectic” category, on the other hand, refers to the Santo Daime group ICEFLU—which vehemently rejects such a notion—and also include other expressions, such as institutions classified under the “neo-ayahuascans” rubric. According to Marcos Vinícius Neves, the idea of this classification emerged in a meeting in 2007, in which leaders of the ayahuasca groups of Acre discussed with Federal Deputy Perpétua Almeida (PCdoB) about the possibilities of creating public policies focusing on ayahuasca (Neves 2017, p. 176).
- 20.
MacRae (in press) understands this categorization as an arbitrary attempt from the Acre groups, who claim the notion of “traditional” in order to exclude ICEFLU from the patrimonialization process. ICELFU is portrayed, according to MacRae, as a rupture with the original church founded by Raimundo Irineu Serra, despite its founder, Sebastião Motta de Melo, having been a direct follower of Irineu Serra and a member of the CICLU-Alto Santo between 1965 and 1975.
- 21.
For an analysis of ayahuasca’s emerging status as a commodity in international trade networks and the global economic system of the early twenty-first century, see Tupper (2017).
- 22.
Despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples were included at a later date in the public policy process on the religious use of ayahuasca, we should emphasize that the political action of the former is not a recent phenomenon. Its political role in the Brazilian public space dates back to the 1970s and, later, to the period of redemocratization in the 1980s (Silva 2018a). However, its focus was mainly on the context of the struggle for the demarcation of lands. The insertion in the field of heritage is a recent move, which encompasses only part of the indigenous populations, mainly the ones from the Amazon.
- 23.
Daiara Hori Figueroa Sampaio is part of the Tukano indigenous people of the Alto Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon. She holds a Master’s degree in Human Rights from the University of Brasília.
- 24.
Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QidmaDBEHA. Accessed on 19/05/2020.
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Fernandes Antunes, H. (2023). “It Is Not Solved Just by Writing It Down on Paper”: Patrimonialization Policies and the Religious Use of Ayahuasca as a Brazilian Intangible Cultural Heritage. In: Montero, P., Nicácio, C., Fernandes Antunes, H. (eds) Religious Pluralism and Law in Contemporary Brazil. Law and Religion in a Global Context, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41981-2_6
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