“The Communist Party and Freedom of Creation”: cultural frentism in times of democratization

• Autor(a) principal: Dalmás, Carine
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Antíteses
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/antiteses/article/view/38326
• topic: The Communist Party of Brazil; Writers; Cultural frontism; Democratization; Latin America.; Partido Comunista do Brasil; Escritores; Frentismo cultural; Democratização; América Latina.

This article seeks to make notes for a reflection on the political-cultural significance of the speeches made by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Pedro Pomar (Secretary of Education and Propaganda of the PCB) and Jorge Amado, communist writer, in the first meeting of the PCB with writers. This event, little explored in studies on the PCB's political and cultural actions, took place in July 1945, in the city of São Paulo, during mobilizations for political democratization in Brazil, legalization of the PCB and amnesty by Luís Carlos Prestes, Secretary General of the party since 1943. The speeches given by Neruda, Pomar and Amado were gathered in the booklet entitled “The Communist Party and Freedom of Creation”, published by Horizonte, in 1946. The article analyzes this document, perhaps the only or main record of the meeting, seeking to relate it to the Pecebist effort to make the experience of cultural frentism carried out in hiding in a proposal for a cultural program for the context of legality. In this perspective, the effort to reaffirm conceptions and value literary projects developed since the 1930s and the significance of the militancy of Jorge Amado and Pablo Neruda in Latin America stands out.