Anthropologist Juan Ossio is expected to be named Peru’s first Minister of Culture, daily El Comercio reported Prime Minister Javier Velásquez as saying.
President Alan Garcia is expected to officially announce Ossio’s appointment during the next few hours.
Ossio is a professor of anthropology at Peru’s Catholic University (PUCP). He received his PhD from the University of Oxford and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and University of Virginia, among others.
He has researched topics related to rural and urban poverty in Peru, the mining sector and Andean culture. He was also a member of a commission lead by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa that investigated the deaths of eight journalists in the Andean hamlet of Uchuraccay, Ayacucho in 1983.
Meanwhile, Peru’s Foreign Trade and Tourism minister, Martin Perez, is planning to step down from his position to run for election in Congress.
Peru’s minister of Women, Nidia Vilchez, Agriculture minister Adolfo de Cordova and Interior minister Octavio Salazar have also expressed interest in running for positions in Peru’s congress, Velásquez said.
