Bolsonaro administration hid pictures with African reference – 07/05/2023 – Panel

During the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), two paintings by the Bahian artist Rubem Valentim alluding to Afro-Brazilian culture and religions of African origin were removed from the office of the Minister of Education.

The absence was noticed by the president of BNDES, Aloizio Mercadante, who went to the ministry for the first time since he headed it to deal with the current minister, Camilo Santana. The works stayed in the cabinet when the ex-minister was dispatched from there. Camilo and Mercadante talked about the bank’s instruments to boost school connectivity and structure projects to expand the number of day care centers and full-time schools.

The paintings were located stored in a room of the folder’s Executive Secretariat. They will be restored and must be displayed again in the cabinet, or in the gallery of ministers.

In the last government, the MEC suffered a strong evangelical influence. Former minister Ricardo Vélez, for example, extinguished Secadi (Secretary of Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion), responsible for diversity actions, such as human rights and ethnic-racial relations.

Born in 1922 in Salvador, Valentim studied journalism and learned to paint on his own. He went through a figurative phase and, in the mid-1950s, turned to his African ancestors, a culture in which he would find the characteristics that would guide his brushstrokes until the end of his life, in 1991.

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