Cultura e trabalho na arena dos bumbás: pareamento de proteções constitucionais no Festival Folclórico de Parintins

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the relationship between culture and work in the context of the Parintins Folklore Festival, one of the most important cultural manifestations in the Amazon and Brazil. The festival constitutes a unique expression of Amazonian popular culture, bringing together artistic, symbolic, and identity elements that reflect historical processes of resistance and cultural belonging. However, alongside the symbolic valorization of Amazonian culture, the event also highlights legal and social challenges related to the working conditions of the numerous workers responsible for the construction and execution of the spectacle. In this context, the research investigates the tension between two sets of fundamental rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution of the Republic: cultural rights, enshrined especially in articles 215 and 216, and the social right to decent, safe, and adequately remunerated work, provided for in articles 6, 7, 200, VIII, and 225 of the constitutional text. In various situations, these rights have been presented as potentially conflicting values, especially when judicial measures aimed at labor protection impact the financial and institutional organization of the boi-bumbá groups. This dissertation starts from the premise that this opposition constitutes a false antagonism, arguing that culture and work are interdependent dimensions of the same social phenomenon, since the cultural production of the festival only materializes through collective human labor. The general objective of the research is to analyze how the law can promote the adequate constitutional balance between the rights to culture and to work in the labor relations established within the scope of the Parintins Folklore Festival. To achieve this purpose, the investigation develops three specific objectives: to examine the historical process of formation and consolidation of the festival as an expression of Amazonian culture and a space for the realization of cultural rights; to analyze the social right to work and the work environment from critical and decolonial perspectives, highlighting the structural vulnerabilities present in the labor relations of the festival; This research aims to investigate judicial decisions related to the event, evaluating the extent to which the Judiciary's actions have contributed to the effective alignment between cultural rights and labor rights, as well as the possibility of adopting structural procedural instruments for resolving complex conflicts. Methodologically, the research adopts the hypothetical-deductive method, developing through bibliographic and documentary investigation, with analysis of specialized literature in the areas of constitutional law, labor law, and social sciences, as well as a qualitative examination of judicial decisions related to the festival. The analysis reveals that labor conflicts associated with the event present structural and recurring characteristics, requiring institutional responses capable of overcoming merely punctual solutions. It concludes that the constitutional protection of culture cannot be conceived without the effective protection of the workers who produce it, making it necessary to recognize cultural work as a constitutive dimension of culture itself. Thus, the alignment between culture and work should guide the construction of legal solutions capable of simultaneously ensuring the preservation of the cultural manifestation and the realization of the social rights of the workers involved in the realization of the Parintins Folklore Festival.