Brazil president reinstates Culture Ministry after artists protest

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

World | Sun May 22, 2016 3:40pm EDT

Brazil president reinstates Culture Ministry after artists protest

Brazil's interim President Michel Temer will reinstate the Culture Ministry on Monday, a government official said, after an outcry from some of the country's top artists over his policy to fold it into the Education Ministry to save money.

The decision to ax the culture ministry was part of Temer's drive to tackle Brazil's record government deficit by reducing the number of ministries by 10 to 23, one of the first measures he announced when he took office on May 12.

Singer-songwriters Caetano Veloso and Erasmo Carlos, pioneers of Brazil's tropicalia and rock music movements, held a concert in the Education building in Rio de Janeiro last Friday in one of the protests by artists against the move.

Temer had also invited actress Bruna Lombardi and singer Daniela Mercury to head up the scaled-back culture portfolio. Both refused.

Temer will reinstate the ministry using a presidential decree and the new minister Marcelo Calero, a diplomat, will take office on Monday, Education Minister Jose Mendonca Filho said on his Twitter account late on Saturday.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-idUSKCN0YD0TX

[forest444]

1. Temer's not too bright. He should have done what Macri did in Argentina, silly boy.

The Argentine right was, as you can imagine, lobbying Macri to dissolve the Culture Ministry - which they see as little more than a vehicle for "degenerate pinko artists and dilettantes" (yes, the GOP loves Macri).

And PanaMacri very well might have, given that he's known to feel that way as well. But armed with his trusty CIA spin doctor (Jaime Durán Barba), he threw them one better: he kept the Culture Ministry instead, and appointed a real knuckle-dragger to lead it.

So whereas his predecessor was an internationally renowned folk musician (Teresa Parodi), the current Culture Minister is best known as a former sportswriter who had all his colleagues fired from the sports magazine El Gráfico after they had all worked together during the 2002 crisis to rescue the periodical.

Not surprisingly no cabinet ministry has suffered deeper cutbacks relative to its size than the Ministry of Culture, which laid off over 500 and shuttered at least 12 programs within days after Macri took over. One of them, the Center for Audiovisual Research (CePIA), was, despite being eliminated, given a new director: Avelluto's own girlfriend, Carolina Azzi.

He denied it, of course, until a Culture Ministry document signed by Azzi emerged that authorized her to remove cinematographic equipment worth $300,000 from CePIA offices. Azzi is an amateur film maker with two documentaries to her credit - both produced by Avelluto (there will, presumably, soon be a third).

The moral of the story: why close the china shop, when you can just appoint a bull to run it.