The achievement of cultural heritage concept in the 1988 Constitution

ABSTRACT

This article aims to show the importance of the concept of heritage adopted in the Federal Constitution of 1988; the first Brazilian constitution that establish a guideline to attribute heritage values to cultural assets. Until then, the Brazilian constitutions just described the types of goods that deserved protection. Today, they must be valued as references of memories, identities, and actions of different social groups, regardless of the aesthetic and stylistic features consecrated by intellectual elites or those related to memorable facts in history. To this end, this text presents the research carried out in the documentation and information’s about the backstage of the National Constituent Assembly, in 1987 and 1988, and about the political and social context that preceded it, reaffirming the democratic character of the adopted concept, as well as its potential for the expansion of public policies of valorisation and preservation of material and immaterial cultural assets. It also aims to stimulate the protection of material heritage considering the constitutional concept, still to be explored with more intensity, even after more than thirty years of the promulgation of the Constitution.

KEYWORDS:
Cultural heritage; Cultural reference; 1988 Brazilian Constitution; National Constituent Assembly; Redemocratization of Brazil