The secretary of Culture of Brazil, Regina Duarte, the actress who staged a novel with a low audience in the Government of Jair Bolsonaro for less than three months, resigned her position for personal reasons, the president himself confirmed.
The famous Brazilian actress left a long career in the world of theater and television to work hand in hand with the president as Secretary of Culture, a position she passed through with more pain than glory, and in which she failed to provide the requested support to the cultural sector, strongly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Bolsonaro’s message, the well-known actress, remembered as ” the widow of Roque Santeria “, left the position because she missed her family and will soon go on to direct the San Pablo District Cinematheque.
“Regina Duarte reported that she misses her family, but in order for her to continue contributing to the Brazilian government and culture, she will take over, in a few days, the Cinematheque in São Paulo, ” said the president.
The actress is the fourth high-ranking official in the Bolsonaro government to leave office in less than a month, which has led the country to a political crisis amid the urgency she faces due to the pandemic.
On April 17, the president dismissed the then Minister of Health, Luis Henrique Mandetta, due to differences regarding the management advanced against COVID-19 and a week later Sergio Moro, who was serving as head of the Justice portfolio, resigned in charge of Bolsonaro’s alleged “political interference”.
Mandetta was replaced by oncologist Nelson Teich, who also faced differences with the head of state and left office on Friday.
Duarte, who for many years was treated as the “ girlfriend of Brazil ” for being the protagonist of several of the soap operas with the highest audience in the country, replaced Roberto Alvim in the Ministry of Culture, who was fulminately dismissed last 20 January after emulating Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in an institutional video.
Bolsonaro then offered the position to Duarte, who has more than 50 years of career and publicly supported the extreme right-wing during the 2018 electoral campaign.
The actress gained fame in several countries as the protagonist of ” Malu Mulher ” (1979), one of the most successful series in Brazil and in which she played a divorced journalist who at the time dealt with issues never discussed on television, such as sex, abortion or drugs.
The actress, who also participated in the soap opera “ Roque Santeiro ” (1985), was unanimously acclaimed until she began to publicly assume her political positions, especially in 2002, when she was the protagonist of a campaign against then-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In 2018, she declared her support for Bolsonaro and, during the campaign, visited him at his residence in Rio de Janeiro when the president recovered from the attack he suffered shortly before the elections.
