Lula signs and grants Camões Prize diploma to Chico Buarque

In a ceremony to award the prestigious Camões Prize to Chico Buarque, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva highlighted the importance of the Brazilian writer, singer and songwriter’s work to poetically telling the story of the relations between Brazil and Portugal – and to using Portuguese as an instrument for disseminating Brazil’s culture and many struggles. 

Chico has transformed the loves of our peoples, the joys of our carnivals, the beauty of our fados and sambas, the stubborn struggles of our citizens towards freedom and democracy into our common literary heritage”

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

“Chico has transformed the loves of our peoples, the joys of our carnivals, the beauty of our fados and sambas, the stubborn struggles of our citizens towards freedom and democracy into our common literary heritage,” he said.

Alongside Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and prime minister António Costa – as well as other authorities and the honoree –, Lula said he was happy to correct one of the absurdities committed against Brazilian culture by the country’s former government: the fact that, despite having been awarded the prize four years ago, Chico Buarque did not receive it due to then notorious neglect of Brazilian culture and its artists.

According to Lula, attacking culture in all its forms was one of the dimensions of the project that the far right tried to establish in Brazil.  “If we are here today – in this gesture of reparation and celebration of Chico’s work – it is because democracy won in Brazil.”

The president also said that obscurantism and denial of the arts were also a mark of the totalitarianism and dictatorships that censored Chico Buarque in Brazil and Portugal in the past. “This prize is talent’s answer to censorship, ingenuity’s response to brute force.”

In a speech prior to that of the Brazilian president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa referred to Chico Buarque as an important part of Portuguese-speaking countries’ common heritage, and said that awarding him need not be based on any decision, since it is imposed by the evidence – above all poetic – offered by his work.

“Chico waited four years to be granted this prize – and we waited four years as admirers wait for those that they admire, as friends wait for each other.”

Deeply moved, Chico Buarque said that it was worth waiting four years to receive the Camões diploma on the very date that Portugal celebrates the end of its dictatorship. According to Chico, the four years seemed like an eternity while Brazil was governed by “a nefarious government during which time seemed to move backwards. 

“That government was defeated at the polls, but that doesn't mean we can relax – because the fascist threat persists in Brazil as it does everywhere else. Today, however, on this afternoon of celebration, it comforts me that the former president had the rare courtesy to not soil the diploma of my Camões Prize, leaving the space blank for our President Lula to sign.”

Chico Buarque said he received the Camões Prize less as a personal honor and more as reparation for the many Brazilian authors and artists who were offended and humiliated during recent years of stupidity and obscurantism.