Maria Marighella, granddaughter of guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella and assemblywoman of Salvador, was exonerated as coordinator of the National Arts Foundation, Funarte, when Dilma Rousseff was removed from the Government. "I cried many times when I saw the emergence of a Brazil that I thought I had left behind", she says in an interview.
"Seeing and hearing the then deputy Jair Bolsonaro dedicate his vote to the torturer of the woman, subject and object of that impeachment process, to the man who commanded the operation responsible for the arrest of my father months before my birth, gave me the radical dimension that, even though we had done a lot, we had to put ourselves in motion to re-establish democratic pacts in other frameworks." Now, with the Ministry of Culture rebuilt as a symbol of the turn of Bolsonaro’s management towards the third term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from the PT, it is Marighella who will take over the leadership of the institution from which she was removed six years ago. "Being able to look at this trajectory with the curve of time and history gives us the collective dimension of this responsibility, but also immense courage."
An actress graduated from the Federal University of Bahia, Marighella, 46 years old, was theater coordinator for the Cultural Foundation of the State of Bahia and Funarte. When she was asked to fill the position, she said she knew it was more of a summons than an invitation. "We are being called to act in a country in ruins and it is during this time that all dimensions of regeneration must be put into action."
Translated by Cassy Dias