Brazil with Its Back to Soft Power: Indifference or Lack of Knowledge About Cultural Goods?

Abstract

In the last decades, the theme of protection of Cultural Heritage has intensified both at the international and regional levels, as well as at the domestic level. As the notion of power in International Relations took on new configurations, especially from the turn of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, the issues related to culture, science, and education also took on a new connotation to the ideals of progress and development of a nation. Despite the efforts made to bring the issue to the forefront, the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods is still a reality that affects Brazil and national states across the globe, moving significant financial amounts every year. So, the concern becomes quite feasible, as there has been a continuous increase in the association of trafficking with other types of crimes, such as terrorism, money laundering, corruption, in addition to the transnational practices by organized crime. In analyzing the theoretical assumptions, the international Conventions and the internal legal system of Brazil, we realized that it is not completely in conformity with what is required of the Brazilian State, taking into account the main obligations contracted in the international sphere, with respect to combating illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods from the perspective of soft power. Therefore, it is intended to present pertinent arguments throughout the present work in the light of multilateral channels, instigating plural debates, connecting, above all, the fields of History and International Relations, in order to raise contents that cross the notions of memory, construction identity, tradition, culture, and power in the geopolitical sphere, as well as making recommendations, so that the internal rules that refer to the issue are adequate to such obligations assumed by the Brazilian State, so that they can be configured as mechanisms of safeguarding of greater power, thus fostering its international projection in the cultural field guided by the foundation in soft power.