Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira (1934- )
This heavy-set Paulista was a powerful activist-author on the Center Left. He published a raft of books (rather hefty) on the politico-economic problems of his country. I found each to be more difficult to get through than his last. Perhaps it was because I was not accustomed to his jargon.
He invited me to dinner at his favorite São Paulo steak house. Excellent food and drinks. He was one of several well-known Brazilian intellectuals who had me out on the town. It may have been because they wanted to find out if my Carioca Portuguese was as good as it sounded in my TV interviews.
In any case, we settled into our Texas-sized T-bones and Bresser (everyone seemed to call him this) asked me an inconsequential question as I took a sip of my beer (which is excellent in Brazil—on tap it’s known as “chopp”). As I started to answer, my host launched into a two-hour oration that lasted till the end of the expensive meal. Not one of my interesting “dialogues” in São Paulo.
Years later I, then a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, had the honor to preside over a seminar he gave. This time I got to get in a few words edgewise. Perhaps because he wasn’t paying for the lunch.
Further Readings
Pereira, Luiz Carlos Bresser. Development and Crisis in Brazil, 1930-1983. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984.
Pereira, Luiz Carlos Bresser. Reforming the State: Managerial Public Administration in Latin America. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999.
Pereira, Luiz Carlos Bresser, and Jose Maravall. Economic Reforms in New Democracies: A Social-democratic Approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira was born in the city of São Paulo. He began teaching at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas in 1959 and was named professor emeritus in 2005. In 1987, he served as the Minister of Finance under the administration of José Sarney. He later acted as Minister of Science and Technology during Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s presidency in 1999. From 1983 to 1985, Pereira was president of the São Paulo State Bank and was later appointed Secretary of the Government. In 1988, he helped found the political party PSDB.