"The Communist Party and creative freedom": cultural frontism on a wave of democratization

This study aims to examine and reflect on the political and cultural meaning of the speeches delivered by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the Brazilian Communist Party's Secretary of Education and Propaganda Pedro Pomar and the communist writer Jorge Amado in the first meeting between the Communist Party of Brazil and the writers. That event was not further explored when studying the political and cultural actions of the Brazilian Communist Party. It took place in Sao Paulo, in July 1945, when Brazilians were mobilizing for the country's political democratization, the legalization of the Communist Party and the Party's Secretary-General, since 1943, Luis Carlos Prestes' amnesty. The speeches given by Neruda, Pomar and Amado were gathered in a book called "O Partido Comunista e a Liberdade de Criacao" published by the publishing company Horizonte in 1946. This paper analyses this document, that may be considered the only and most important record of the meeting and it aims to associate it with the party's effort to make the experience of the cultural frontism that occurred clandestinely into a proposal to a legal cultural movement. Therefore, the effort to reaffirm conceptions and to value literary projects that were developed in the 1930's and the meaning of Jorge Amado's and Pablo Neruda's militancy in Latin America must be highlighted.