Summary

Fernando Henrique Cardoso (b. Rio de Janeiro, June 18, 1931) had an influential academic career before going into politics and becoming a senator, foreign minister, finance minister and president of Brazil. His book Dependency and Development in Latin America, co-authored with Enzo Faletto, was translated into several languages and was very widely cited. Cardoso’s academic career was interrupted by a military coup d’état in 1964, forcing him and many other left-leaning Brazilian academics into exile. In 1968 he was allowed to return to Brazil, where he and a number of colleagues started an applied research institute. When the military government began a gradual transition back to democracy, Cardoso joined a movement to rally the middle class and intelligentsia to pressure for direct elections to the presidency. Cardoso was elected an “alternate senator” on an opposition party ticket and later succeeded to the Senate. As a senator, he played a key role in the Constituent Assembly that wrote a new constitution for Brazil in 1988. In 1992, he left the Senate to take the position of minister of external relations. In 1993, President Itamar Franco unexpectedly prevailed on him to accept the position of finance minister. Much to everyone’s surprise, Cardoso and his team succeeded in ending hyperinflation and giving Brazil a stable currency without imposing austerity or hardship. The success of the monetary reform led to his election as president of Brazil in 1994. In 1998, he again won the presidency, but in his second term the economy went into decline, largely due to crises in Mexico, Russia, and elsewhere. In 2002 he passed the presidential sash on to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party. In retirement from the presidency, he continued to be active in the leadership of his political party, and served on many international boards and commissions. In 2016, he supported the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff for violations of fiscal responsibility laws.