70 years of the Frente de Trabalhadores da Cultura de Nuestra America: experience of organizing cultural workers and the link with the contemporary Network of Popular Political Theater and Video Schools Nuestra América

Abstract

The work analyzes, from a historical perspective, the meaning and legacy of the Frente de Trabalhadores da Cultura de Nuestra America, which brought together Latin American artists and collectives between 1972 and 1974. Reflection on the Frente, 70 years later from its inception, is guided by the context in which the awareness of underdevelopment was present in the intellectual, political, cultural and economic environment, as a key to interpreting the structure of dependence and subordination to the center, present in countries on the periphery of capitalism, in the light of of the Dialectic of Dependence. The article reflects the role of culture in the processes of social transformation and organization to resist coups and implement the cycle of dictatorships in Latin America. Finally, it identifies limits and potentialities that the experience under analysis points to the challenges present in the field of counter-hegemonic political culture, especially political and popular theater, and presents the Network of Schools of Theater and Video Political and Popular Nuestra America as a legacy from the experience of organization and resistance resulting from the Frente Nuestra América of the 1970s.