“The first to stop and the last to return”: the cultural workers in Brazil in times of COVID-19

Abstract

In this essay, I discuss the situation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic by people who work in the cultural area in Brazil. First, I characterize the cultural sector by showing its participation in the Brazilian economy and the inequalities that historically constitute it. We will see that, despite its symbolic and economic importance, it is a labor sector with high rates of informality that, even before COVID-19, faced an increase in precariousness as well as an environment of growing intolerance and censorship. In the second part of the essay, I deal with the context of the pandemic and its consequences for cultural workers, being one of the first groups “to stop” and one of the last to return to their activities. I discuss how the emergency actions developed so far for the sector, although important, are not enough to solve the problem and, in some cases, even reinforce pre-existing inequalities. I end with a brief reflection on the futures that are being drawn and the need to develop new analysis and observation tools that allow us to think about the modes of existence in precarious and “end of the world” scenarios such as those presented today.