Pablo Avelluto
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alejandro Pablo Avelluto (born 18 February 1966) is an Argentine journalist, book editor and politician. He held the office of Minister for Culture of Argentina since 10 December 2015 to September 2018,[1] appointed by Mauricio Macri.[2] Between 2014 and 2015 he served as General Coordinator of the Public Media System of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
Avelluto was born on 18 February 1966 in Buenos Aires. His father was a Roman Catholic, while his mother was of sephardic and Spanish origin. His maternal grandmother, Gentil Calderón, was born in İzmir in 1905 and through her is related to polemicist Carlos Maslatón.[3] He was educated at Carlos Pellegrini High School of Commerce. He holds a Licentiate degree in Social Communication Sciences from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, where he taught and conducted research. In the field of journalism, he has contributed to publications such as La Nación, ¨El porteño¨, ¨Tres Puntos¨, ¨El Ciudadano¨ and ¨Babel¨, among other media.[4][5] He also worked in radio journalism and was one of the founding members of ¨El Bulo de Merlin¨, one of the first community radio stations in Argentina.[6]
His career in the book industry, which started in 1993, included various positions in publishing houses such as Espasa Calpe, Grupo Editorial Planeta and Editorial Sudamericana, Random House Mondadori. He also worked in educational publishing houses such as Ángel Estrada & Co. and magazines such as Torneos y Competencias. During his term as Editorial Director of the Southern Region at Random House Mondadori, between 2005 and 2012, he was responsible for the publication of more than four thousand works of different genres and authors, half of which were of Argentine origin. Among the local authors published during his administration are Horacio Verbitsky, Jorge Lanata, Beatriz Sarlo, Ricardo Forster, Marcos Aguinis, Jorge Asís, Jorge Fernández Díaz, Maitena Burundarena, Pacho O'Donnell and Juan José Sebreli.[7]
Between 2004 and 2005 he was Vice-President of the Argentine Chamber of Publications.[8]
In 2014 he was appointed General Coordinator of the Public Media System of the City of Buenos Aires, which includes the radios AM 1110 (the city radio) and FM 2x4,[9] the city channel, the Cultural Agenda and La Agenda, a magazine of ideas and culture in the city founded during his term.
In the October elections of 2015, he was elected as Parlasur representative for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, after leading the ballot in PRO.[10] After taking office as President of the Nation, on 10 December 2015 Mauricio Macri appointed Avelluto as Minister for Culture of the Nation.[11]
Administration as head of the Ministry of Culture
On 10 December 2015, he took office as Minister for Culture of the Nation. Innovation, creativity, federalism and consensus among the Argentinian people stand out as the main focus points in his administration.[12] has three subsecretaries: Culture and Creativity (Enrique Avogadro), Cultural Cooperation (Iván Petrella) and Cultural Heritage (Marcelo Panozzo).
Regarding the direction of his administration, Avelluto said in an interview with the newspaper La Capital de Rosario: "I have the challenge of proving that I can make cultural politics without propaganda and without asking the artists who they vote for, or what their partisan and ideological sympathies are. The relevance of the artists is in their work and in their talent. There is no greater value. The state must open the field to those who agree with the government and those who do not, that is the challenge when it comes to making public policies." He added: "Our vision poses a much more luminous, open, plural and diverse scenario to several orientations of the world, that enrich one another. There are no good guys and bad guys facing each other in unresolved conflicts, we are looking for a more open process of collective construction."[13] In an interview for the digital newspaper Infobae, he pointed out that his administration "aims at generational renewal".[14]
The Ministry's Secretariat for the Strategic Coordination of National Thought was dissolved. Avelluto pointed out that “the notion of the existence of a 'national thought' is very typical of the 20th century: the idea that there is a thought of ours that is in confrontation with another way of thinking. To us there are many forms of thought and all are produced, consumed, generated, intervened by Argentines."[15]
Avelluto conserved the autonomous functioning of different institutions (National Library, National Arts Fund, National Theater Institute, INCAA, National Commission of Public Libraries, national museums, permanent companies, etc.). Where appropriate he appointed recognized specialists, such as Leandro de Sagastizábal and Alejandro Tantanian, as heads.[16][17]
Avelluto also announced the appointment of Alberto Manguel, the internationally recognized author, as director of the National Library.[18][19][20][21][22][23]
The legacy bequeathed
In June 2015 the government presented the Report El estado del Estado (The state of the State),[24] which sought to carry out "a diagnosis of the National State in December 2015 and identify the pending challenges, which sometimes coincide with mistakes or excesses of the immediately previous administration, but often show long-standing Argentinian frustrations, sometimes even decades old."[24]
In the section on the situation inherited at the Ministry, the Report stated that "the main characteristics of the Ministry of Culture were disorder and administrative inefficiency. This was verified, for example, with the existence of unpaid debts for 156 million pesos. Another central aspect was the excessive hiring of personnel in the last year of the previous administration, in which the central management of the ministry went from 3,000 to 4,064 employees only in 2015, among different employment categories. Several dozens of these hirings were made in the last hours before the change of government."[25]
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