From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Nov 27 2004 - 15:19:39 EST
Obituary Celso Furtado An economist who offered radical interventionist policies for Brazil Sue Branford The Guardian, Nov. 26, 2004 Celso Furtado, who has died aged 84 from a heart attack, was Brazil's most renowned economist, internationally revered for his political commitment. He maintained his lucidity to the end, signing a petition calling on the government to keep Carlos Lessa on as president of Brazil's state- owned development bank the BNDES. Lessa was one of the few remaining voices, in an increasingly orthodox government with market-oriented economic policies, to defend the growth-orientated interventionist policies that Furtado had proposed for 50 years. Lessa still lost his job, but President Lula felt obliged to phone Furtado to justify his decision. Furtado was born into a well-to-do family in Pombal, a town in the drought-ridden north-east. One of his earliest memories was hiding with his father, the local magistrate, when cangaceiros (bandits) invaded the town. "I was shocked by their violence," he recalled. "I remember the corpses on the streets." He also had vivid memories of the 1924 floods that inundated the town after a long drought. "I finished up with the idea that danger was on all sides, either from nature or from humans. Perhaps this explains why I am a very cautious man. Although at times I have defended what may seem radical action, this has always been after very carefully considering all points of view." After studying in Rio de Janeiro, Furtado served with the Brazilian expeditionary force in Italy during the second world war, where he was hurt in an accident during the final offensive. A voracious reader, Furtado made a point, when he was in Lisbon, of having his picture taken in front of the statue of one of his favourite novelists, Eça Queiroz. This photograph (in which he is revealed as a handsome young soldier) became one of his prized possessions. Postwar, Furtado took an economics doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1948, he married Lucia Tosi, an Argentinian, with whom he had two sons. In 1950, he moved to Santiago, the Chilean capital, where he joined the new Economic Commission for Latin America (Ecla). Under the inspiration of John Maynard Keynes, the industrialised countries had just created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions that were intended to herald an era of steady economic growth and prosperity. Latin America, too, was infected by the climate of hope. Thinkers such as Raul Prebisch, Jorge Ahumada, Juan Loyola, and Anibal Pinto began to produce exciting ideas about overcoming the region's structural problems of underdevelopment. Furtado's most important contribution to this debate, written at King's College, Cambridge, in 1957-58, was The Economic Formation Of Brazil. Using a Keynesian approach, he combined profound knowledge of Brazilian history with an analysis of the structural constraints on the economy to formulate a project for national development. One of his particularly far-sighted conclusions was that the transformations in capitalism, particularly the formation of huge transnational groups, presented serious risks to this nation-building project. He recommended that Brazil should becautious before integrating into the world economy. Back in Brazil in 1958, Furtado joined President Juscelino Kubitschek's government, which was building the new inland capital of Brasilia and promoting industrialisation under the slogan "50 years in Five". He set up the Sudene development agency for his beloved north-east. In President João Goulart's government in 1962, as the country's first ever planning minister, he drew up a three-year development plan. But in April 1964 Furtado was forced into exile by the military coup. In 1965 he became the first foreigner to be appointed head of the economic development faculty at the University of Paris. After the 1979 amnesty he began to pay frequent visits to Brazil, while retaining residence in Paris. Divorced from his first wife, he married a Brazilian journalist, Rosa Freire d'Aguiar. With the 1985 return to civilian rule, he became Brazil's ambassador to the European Economic Community. In 1988, he was appointed culture minister in José Sarney's government. When I met Furtado in Rio in 2001, he was already having to be helped in and out of his leather armchair, but his green eyes sparkled with delight when he spoke of Brazil's landless movement, the MST. "It is Brazil's most important social movement ever," he enthused. Despite the repeated setbacks, he never lost hope that eventually Brazil would find the path to development. He is survived by his wife and by two sons from his first marriage. · Celso Monteiro Furtado, economist, born July 26 1920; died November 20 2004 --- End forwarded message ---
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Nov 29 2004 - 00:00:01 EST