Between Verses and Laws: The Interrupted Construction of Human Dignity with Chico Buarque

Abstract

This paper analyzes Chico Buarque's song "Construção" (1971) as a historical document and a tool for social critique, establishing an interdisciplinary dialogue with Law. The research investigates how the work reflects the precariousness of life, alienation, and the dehumanization of the worker, both in the context of the military dictatorship and in contemporary times. The lyrics' repetitive and proparoxytonic structure is examined as a metaphor for mechanical routine and anonymous death, contrasting this reality with the constitutional principle of human dignity. The study characterizes Brazil as an "unfinished work," highlighting the abyss between legal guarantees and structural violence. It concludes that music acts as a guardian of collective memory and an ethical warning, revealing social fissures that legal norms often fail to reach and reaffirming the need for the effective realization of fundamental rights against the invisibility of the subject.