ABSTRACT
Understood as a political process, the heritage public policy limits and permits the realization of the political (ROSANVALLON, 2017): it structures spaces for actions, and defines challenges, priorities and participants. This chapter focuses on a large-scale preservation public policy developed at the turn of the 21st century in Brazil, the Monumenta Program (1999 – 2010) where the exercise of the political was limited to the level of managers and experts who, in turn, struggled with different views inside the central government. Through official documents, analysis, and interviews with program managers, the research discusses that the program, conceived in a neoliberal context and with a strong discursive appeal, was pressured over time by the world of heritage and local realities, acquiring other contours as it was implemented. Throughout the process, a new line of thought in defence of urban reform and the social function of heritage also influenced decision-making at the level of managers, albeit in a limited way. The idea of sustainable preservation brought by the program and centred on the economic dimension is questioned as well as how the low-intensity participation of this top-down initiative contributed to distancing the program from the realities in which it operated, contributing to delays, expenses, and revisions of projects that could have been avoided.
