Thales de Azevedo (1904-1995)
Another of those Greek names. One of the fathers of Brazilian anthropology. He was from the state of Bahia. I met him when I was there on assignment for the Ford Foundation, which was formulating programs on race relations in Brazil. I was a consultant for the Foundation in that area. I chose Bahia because it was the region of greatest African influence in the New World (including North America).
Sometimes you meet famous people because they seek you out, not vice versa. Perhaps he heard of me in the newspapers when I was airing some unconventional views about race in Brazil. In any case, I was settled in my hotel (Hotel da Bahia where I stayed on my first trip to Brazil) when the nephew of Thales brought him to the hotel. Thales was a slim, rather short, figure in, I would have guessed, his late 70’s. We had a wonderful conversation. He was very talkative and wanted to know my plans. He was one of many Brazilian anthropologists I got to know well.
Before I got to Brazil I had never thought of anthropology as one of my principal disciplinary tools. My training was largely geared to history and politics.
Faced with a new society (and very different from where I grew up), I knew I needed some new tools. Brazil, as a land with large populations of Indians and Blacks, had attracted the attention of many talented Brazilian scholars. They quickly became required reading. A significant number had been educated in the best universities of Britain, France and the United States. Some, like Darcy Ribeiro (the founder of the University of Brasilia), had become prominent in national politics.
I soon learned that anthropology and history had quite similar intellectual approaches. This became clear when I worked quite closely with a team of anthropologists at the Federal University of Rio who were carrying out an experimental affirmative action program (one of the first in Brazil) for Afro-Brazilian students in the social sciences. It was cosponsored by the Ford Foundation and a State of Rio Foundation. The students were recruited from the greater Rio area. I spent a few hours with them and I could see the program was working well.
A gratifying experience.
Further Readings
Azevedo, Thales de. Ensaios de antropologia social. Salvador, Brazil: Universidade da Bahia, 1959.
Azevedo, Thales de. Social Change in Brazil. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1963.
Azevedo, Thales de, and Maria David de Azevedo. Cachimbos de alagoinhas. Madison, Wis.: Society for American Archaeology and the University of Wisconsin Press, 1963.
Thales de Azevedo was born in Salvador, Bahia. His intellectual pursuits included medicine, writing, and anthropology. After graduating from Bahia’s School of Medicine, he opened a clinic in Salvador and subsequently worked as Secretary of Education, Health, and Public Assistance. Azevedo later chaired the department of Anthropology and Ethnography at the School of Philosophy. In 1949, he received a prestigious award from the Brazilian Academy of Letters for the publication of Povoamente da cidade do Salvador. In 1985, Azevedo received the Machado de Assis Prize, an esteemed literary award in Brazil.