Brazil: Military member appointed to top ministry post

RIO DE JANEIRO – The administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has named a retired air force lieutenant to the education ministry’s No. 2 spot, the latest in a long list of military appointments by the far-right government.

An announcement published Friday in the official gazette said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Machado Vieira will serve as the ministry’s executive secretary.

He is now the fourth person to be assigned to the position since Bolsonaro came to power in January.

Viera’s predecessor, Iolene Lima, was fired after just eight days on the job when a 2013 interview surfaced on social media showing her defending “education based on the word of God.”

“The student will learn the author of history is God, that the creator of geography is God, God made the hills and the climate… the greatest mathematician of all time is God,” Lima said.

Controversy at the ministry has also deepened as anti-globalists claim that Brazil’s schools are wrought with “cultural Marxism,” leading leftist congressman Alessandro Molon to tweet that the ministry has proven “incapable.”

“The time the minister spends on internal disputes is precious time for millions of children and teenagers,” Molon said, referring to Education Minister Ricardo Velez Rodriguez.

Bolsonaro is a far-right ex-army captain who waxes nostalgic about the 1964-1985 authoritarian regime and has given a prominent role to the military in his government.

In a television interview before he was elected, he said he admired military schools because they were places where “students are frisked regularly, they sing the national anthem, there’s civics and moral education classes, they call the teachers ‘sir.’”

On his first day in office, his education minister also created an “under-secretary for the promotion of civic military schools.”