The "Movimento de Cultura Popular": A Case Study of a Populist Social Movement

• In Event: Educación no formal, movimientos sociales e inclusión

Abstract

Twenty years ago when I began my research on a regionalist populist politician in Northeast Brazil, populist studies was a small field. Since that time, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the rise of right wing populism in Europe and the United States has turned populist studies a booming field. Despite the increase in scholarship, within the field of Latin American Studies, scholars are primarily focused on recent radical leftist populism, divorced from its roots in classical populism or neoliberal populism. There is also a tendency to focus on Spanish speaking Latin America and neglect the Brazilian experience; to focus on national politics and presidents and ignore the regional and local.
While it is tempting to focus on the captivating populist political leaders, more attention needs to be devoted to populist social movements. The existing research represents populism from a top down perspective. When discussed at all, populist social movements, are represented as entities that despite good intentions, tend to be limited by lack of autonomy and clientelism. This paper focuses on one populist social movement from the period of classical populism in Brazil, the Movimento de Cultura Popular. Established in 1960, the MCP was formed to address Pernambuco’s educational inequalities. While the MCP was more autonomous than recent populist organizations such as Venezuela’s Circulos Boliviarianos, it has been accused of being a political venture. This paper will evaluate the degree to which the MCP was an autonomous populist social movement working to reduce educational inequalities in Pernambuco.

Author

• Tia Malkin-Fontecchio, West Chester University