História social da arte engajada no Maranhão: 1968-1985

Abstract

From the end of the 1960s, a segment of artists from Maranhão began to produce art in an engaged way, mainly in expression theater. In the following decade, artists from other languages began to develop productions with popular themes, combining aesthetic experiments with the denunciation of social inequalities and the various types of violence against urban workers and peasants resulting from the political and social transformations that Maranhão was going through at that time. In 1966, José Sarney took over the government of Maranhão and developed a government under the motto ―Maranhão Novo‖, imposing a developmental policy on the economic and political model called ―conservative modernization‖. Allied to this process and partly resulting from it, the discovery of the Carajás mine in 1977, in Pará and the option of exporting ore through Porto do Itaqui, in São Luís, provoked a violent process of compulsory expropriation of thousands of families in the areas of influence of the Grande Carajás Project – PGC, in the city of São Luís and rural areas of the island. In parallel to this process, during the Sarney government, Land Law no. 2,979 of July 17, 1969, known as the ―Sarney Land Law‖. This allowed vacant state lands occupied by squatters to be sold to large landowners and companies, causing land grabbing, repression of peasant leaders, arrests and murders. At the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 80s, student movements and opposition political movements began to occur, adding new elements to the problems that formed in Maranhão from the second half of the 60s onwards. engaged art production proves this thesis. On the other hand, from the 1960s onwards, progressive priests and nuns arrived in Maranhão, enthusiastic about the ideas of the Second Vatican Council, and practitioners of Liberation Christianity. These religious men and women begin to interact with committed artists, especially in the theater and audiovisual areas, promoting actions mediated by art in Base Ecclesiastical Communities. In this thesis, the different artistic production processes involved are analyzed, especially in the spheres of theater, visual arts and audiovisual. It covers artistic productions aimed at a broad public, productions directly linked to the actions of the Progressive Catholic Church, social and political movements, some of which emerged in the sector of popular struggles.