Cultural rights, public policies of reading, the “Curitiba Lê Program”: law and literature from a different perspective

Abstract

This article aims at discussing cultural rights and public policies of reading, and it analyzes the Curitiba Lê Program. The research showed that the cultural right to read is a fundamental human right for a life with dignity, grounded on the principles of equality and freedom. Therefore, it has as its subject matter a Brazilian municipal policy called “Curitiba Lê” (meaning “The city of Curitiba reads”), carried by the local government of Curitiba, particularly by Fundação Cultural de Curitiba (Cultural Foundation of Curitiba). It has as its premise the idea that the access to reading and its exercise is a fundamental cultural right, which should entitle not just the citizens of Curitiba but all citizens. The implementation of the program Curitiba Lê by the Cultural Foundation of Curitiba implied in various kinds of actions for increasing people’s interest in books, that is, to make them become actual readers by giving them access to reading. Through the data provided by the Cultural Foundation of Curitiba and interviews with its creators and coordinators, this article demonstrates the importance of promoting public policies on culture and how comprehensive they can be. The exercise of cultural rights through public policies that enable their access requires a model of dialogic and deliberative democracy. For this purpose, the theories of Jürgen Habermas, Carlos Santiago Nino and Roberto Gargarella underlie the discussion and provide a model for the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy that fosters this research.