Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1931- )
A brilliant intellectual and a most accomplished president. I first knew him in academic circles in Brazil and later in academic contacts in Washington, especially when I was a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
He climbed impressively all the steps of scholarly and political success in Brazil. His base was the powerful state of São Paulo. Like many of his postwar generation, his first foreign influence was French, although he later spent much time in the U.S., especially at Stanford University. He was perfectly multilingual in French, Spanish and English, although not, as far as I knew, in German (few Brazilians are). FHC, as he is known, also had that famous Brazilian talent of “conciliação” (reconciling differences). That’s akin to another great Brazilian talent–dribbling in soccer. Cardoso was renowned as one of the inventors, along with a Chilean, of the concept of “dependency,” which, at first, was rather clouded in its meaning but essentially referred to an asymmetry of power between industrial nations and “emerging” nations. It went back to an older idea about the allegedly unequal terms of trade among them.
The concept became the dominant fashion in analyses of the Western Hemisphere. Once at a meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, a lead forum was arranged on dependency. The star was FHC. One of the panelists was a good friend of mine (very gringo) who had a longstanding antipathy to the concept. After his acerbic remarks FHC began what I would call a classic midfield soccer maneuver. His presentation had the ineffable quality of soccer dribbling.
He gently tapped the ball over his head. My befuddled friend never saw what went past him. Result? The Dependency intellectual 10, Gringo 0.
FHC applied the same technique in politics, but it was harder since his conterrâneos also played “futebol.” As senator and president he kept behind him a very fragile coalition in a treacherously multiple-party political system.
His triumphs were legion. Perhaps his most notable was breaking a ruinous escalation of inflation with the “real” plan when he was Finance Minister under a notoriously weak President, who had succeeded to office when his corrupt predecessor was forced out.
As president, FHC scored other firsts: reforming the tangled pension system and restructuring the chaotic banking system. I was on very good terms with him (I think) until I made the mistake of criticizing Senhor Excelência for, during his first term, declaring that he needed a second term to finish the job. I, in a newspaper interview (always a dangerous venue for a foreign visitor), opined that it was not a wise move for a new president in a fragile and recently reconstituted democracy.
The President was not amused. My friends and his (there were several) said the President was quite p.o.ed. There went those medals I might have gotten from the government. Never mind. Getting those would have blown my cover with my students.
FHC also attracted foreign investments: presenting a welcoming face to Wall Street. He retired from the presidency on a high note. He moved on to continuous accolades in the U.S. and Europe. I witnessed one such event at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He also cemented his reputation with a well-crafted book in defense of his presidency.
One aspect of that era, which I found unsettling, was the highly bitter electoral battles between FHC and his eventual successor, Lula. The latter accused the former of selling out to big money, and FHC charged Lula with being in league with dangerous radicals. Neither was right. In fact, their successive policies meshed well, leading to strengthened democracy and greater prosperity. Their highly diverse social backgrounds revealed much about contemporary Brazil’s diversity—one was from the crème of São Paulo and the other from dirt poor Pernambuco.
P.S. I repaired my earlier faux pas with FHC by speaking well of him in a later book [The gringo learned conciliação---]
Further Readings
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Enzo Faletto. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Brian Winter. The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007.
Chilcote, Ronald H. Intellectuals and the Search for National Identity in Twentieth-century Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In 1969, during the military regime, he was forcibly retired from his position as a Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of São Paulo. He later served as honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and lectured extensively in Europe and the United States. A distinguished politician, FHC won the Brazilian presidency in 1995 and finished his term in 2003. From 2003 to 2008, he acted as professor-at-large at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, and remains today on the board of overseers.