Government 101: Lessons on democracy from a Brazilian pop star

Anitta´s political classes fill an educational void in Brazil

Three years ago, Anitta’s Vai Malandra video sparked intense debate over its feminist credentials. Was it a feminist anthem embracing female sexuality and beating back unrealistic body expectations by showing the singer’s cellulite, or was it simply glossy sexploitation? While her videos highlight her body, Anitta´s lyrics convey a confident woman who knows what she wants, challenging the stereotype that a beautiful woman can´t be smart. Her recent live politics classes follow a similar thread.

Anitta is a bisexual, Afro-Brazilian pop star who grew up in a working-class community on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Some of her family still live in the same neighborhood, but it has fallen under the control of drug traffickers. The singer has a solid fan base among Brazil’s LGBTQ+ community and the working-class, and a collaboration with Madonna has also helped catapult her international profile.

Still, since late 2018, the star has been criticized for not speaking out against Jair Bolsonaro and his attacks on queer people and other minorities in Brazil. After the elections, Anitta said she was afraid to take a political position. The critiques, however, have pushed Anitta to learn about politics -- and to share what she is learning with her 47 million Instagram followers.

She started last year, raising the alarm about climate change.

But since early May, Anitta and her friend, attorney and CNN Brasil presenter Gabriela Prioli, have held a weekly series of “politics classes.” They began introducing the basics of civics, something excluded from official curricula for decades. Prioli kicks off by explaining what the three branches of government are and then breaks down the history of Brazil’s republic and its federation of states. The concepts provide the essential framework for anyone wanting to create political change. More than 1.768 million people viewed one of her recent classes.

The pair have also discussed political polarization and what it means to be right and left, questions worth considering not only in Brazil. In that video, Anitta says: “I don’t think there’s anyone who’s is right 100% of the time or wrong 100%. From there, you’d never be able to talk. People who like [Bolsonaro] would never be able to talk with people who don’t like him.” Prioli responds that the left and the right are more than just the extremes; there are gradations in between.

The singer has said that she prefers not to ally herself with a political party. Still, her classes have prompted threats, which she has said won´t stop her from talking.

Anitta´s efforts may seem innocuous, but they are meaningful in a country where, until 1985, illiterate people were barred from voting. The ban dated back to colonial times and ensured that only the sons of wealthy, European colonists would have a political voice. Further, enslaved people, indigenous people and women were all excluded from the educational system until 1889 when the monarchy was overthrown in favor of a republic governed by wealthy landowners.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Paulo Freire headed up large-scale adult literacy campaigns in highly unequal northeastern Brazil. At the time, the region was a hotbed of progressive organizing with both communists and Catholics pushing for social justice for oppressed peasants and poor. Since teaching people to read would qualify them to vote, Freire´s campaign was revolutionary. The 1964 military coup criminalized such efforts, and Freire was imprisoned briefly before going into exile.

In 1968, he published Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which proposes a mutual relationship between teacher, student and society rather than a top-down relationship. In this sense, Anitta is an unlikely heir to Freire, as her classes equip students with the tools they need to construct their own knowledge.

Even now, Brazilian public schools still don’t teach civics. So, while Brazil’s 1988, post-dictatorship Constitution grants all Brazilians the right to vote regardless of literacy, even college-educated Brazilians don’t necessarily understand how their electoral and political system works. A journalist friend in Rio told me that she specifically took a course on government while at university so she would have a handle on this. But, she said, this was far from ordinary.

Marklize Siqueira, a feminist, Afro-indigenous activist in Manaus praised Anitta’s classes. “There are a lot of people in this country who don’t know what democracy is,” Siqueira said, noting that the singer reaches a population that progressive political parties may not.

“Anitta came from the periphery. She came from the periphery and rose to the world of success. That doesn’t mean she had access to knowledge. She had access to money and fame,” Siqueira said.

While the singer is working to share the basics of democratic governance with her fans, the actual government seems intent on eviscerating the country’s institutions. Brazil has been without a Minister of Health for more than a month in the midst of a pandemic, and an April cabinet meeting shocked the nation with statements from the Minister of Education calling for jailing the members of the Supreme Court and the Minister of the Environment affirming that the COVID pandemic offered an opportunity to gut protections since the press was preoccupied with the virus.

In this context, Anitta may portray herself as a political naïf, but it’s hard to imagine a more astute use of her platform.

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Lisa Davis is providing editing support. You can contact her at mslisadavis64@gmail.com