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 When an intellectual dies, we remain his or her disciples, when a political leader dies, we continue as his or her followers, but when someone who represents a moral patrimony of the country dies, we remain moral orphans.
This is what happened when Celso Furtado died. One of the major figures of twentieth-century Brazilian thought has passed away but has left us his books with his interpretations of Brazil for Brazil.
The politician who formulated laws and plans that helped the country construct modernity has passed away but has left us his proposals. The greatest absence will be the moral reserve that he signified.
Celso Furtado was one of those rare personalities upon whom we counted to say “Enough!” in those moments when the Brazilian political process had need of that cry.
Besides his daily political activity, without an elected office to compromise him, his works and example were our reference point. He always presented himself with moderation and firmness and spoke on behalf of all of us when it was necessary.
We remain moral orphans, lacking anyone else with the intellectual, moral, and political patrimony to assume his role.
He was part of a select group comprising Barbosa Lima Sobrinho, Raymundo Faoro, Dom Helder Câmara, Evandro Lins e Silva.
Persons who were above political parties, more respected than the acting politicians, reserving their voices for the grave moments to sound the alert about crises that the politicians did not perceive or to suggest the road that the leaders did not want to take.
Today one of the men who contributed the most towards making Brazil a richer country makes Brazil a poorer one. Brazilian intellectual life is impoverished by his lost.
Rare indeed are Brazilians who have left such an important contribution. Brought up in the Brazilian Northeast in a country that was rural, an agricultural exporter, and had abolished slavery a mere thirty years earlier, Celso Furtado used his privileged intellect to observe, understand and orient the social change that the world was undergoing.
He was capable of perceiving the ongoing dynamic, of understanding the potential and the risks of that dynamic and of formulating roads for a development that would benefit the Brazilian people.
Like no one else he discoursed about our economic formation from the origins of our history in his classic The Economic Growth of Brazil: A Survey from Colonial to Modern Times and in more recent works.
He produced documents that served as the basis for Brazil’s process of industrialization and for regional development in the Northeast. Innumerable paragraphs of his books were transformed into articles in official government dailies.
He was an active thinker, present in both ideas and actions. His name will remain as that of one of the great intellectuals of his time and that of the militant who was present at the making of great national decisions.
The absence of this man of action and simple life will be compensated for by the permanence of his proposals, of SUDENE [the Superintendency of the Development of the Northeast], of the planning and the goals that Brazil formulated thanks to him.
He will also leave his legacy of coherence. He fought to assert his ideas but never desisted from them or from his values.
He served Brazil as a soldier in Italy during the Second World War and was a professor all over the world. But, above all, he served the generations to come as an example of how an intellectual, a Brazilian, a citizen, a man should act.
The death of Celso Furtado has diminished our intellectuality, left Brazilian intelligence poorer, but it has left our history greater for the memory of what he did and for the example that he left us.
His true absence will be like that of the older brother who silently bore the ethics of the Brazilian family.
Cristovam Buarque was a student of Celso Furtado. He has a Ph.D. in economics and is a PT senator for the Federal District. He was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage – www.cristovam.com.br – and write to him at cristovam@senador.gov.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.
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