The Program of Historical Cities (PCH) within the cultural policies of the 1970s : culture, planning and national development

Abstract

The article analyzes the Program of Historical Cities - PCH (Programa de Cidades Históricas) as part of the network of relations and power that implemented cultural policies in the 1970s in Brazil, in an integrated manner to the government's economic sector, based on the lines of development project, oriented to a regionalism associated with decentralization. It presents first official documents that guided the formulation of the National Cultural Policy in the 1970s and the intellectual network involved in its preparation, comprising officers from different state agencies, historically active in the cultural field. The article highlights the naturalization of the association between tourism, culture and heritage and the inclusion of the cultural field in the discussions about the Brazilian socioeconomic development. It analyzes partnerships between the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Secretariat of Planning of the Presidence of the Republic (Secretaria de Planejamento da Presidência da República) for the creation and implementation of the PCH, understood as a project of integrated ministerial actions. We identify the ways of incorporation of cultural policies in development plans of the ideological program called "Great Brasil" (Brasil Grande), and pointed out the complexity of networks and representations about the Brazilianness values associated with the traditional folk Northeastern. We brought for analysis the memories of high-ranking military regime protagonists and technicians who shared experiences related to the PCH, and collated them with a diverse documentation.