Raymundo Faoro (27 April 1925, in

Vacaria Vacaria is a municipality in the northeast of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is located at a latitude of 28° 30' 44" South and a longitude of 50° 56' 02" west, with an altitude of 971 meters. Its population in 2020 was ...

– 15 May 2003, in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

) was a lawyer,

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

, sociologist, historian, writer and president of the Brazilian Bar Association, which in Portuguese is known as OAB (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil). Even though lawyers have an extensive presence in the political arena of Brazil, not one president after Faoro gained the same intellectual respect as he did. Faoro was the author of several books. The most important of all these books was "Os Donos do Poder" (The Owners of Power). In this book, Faoro describes the history of power in Brazilian history, from the pre-colonial times to approximately the end of Getúlio Vargas's first term. In this book, Faoro gave special attention to the "estamento", or Stand, which he notes was a classification used by Marx but mistranslated in the English and French translations of his German work.Chapter 2 "A Revolução Portuguesa" Note 16 IN Pg 68 of Os Donos Do Poder 6th Edition 1984 This "Stand", which he differentiates clearly from the ruling "Elite" was dominant in the creation of modern Brazil. According to Faoro, this "Stand", a strange mixture of the nobility, the bureaucrats and the military, always attempted to use the power and wealth of the State in self benefit, so preventing the masses from ruling the country in benefit of the majority. He also wrote books on Brazilian social and political thought, on the writer and poet

Machado de Assis Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (), often known by his surnames as Machado de Assis, ''Machado,'' or ''Bruxo do Cosme Velho''Vainfas, p. 505. (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908), was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short stor ...

and Brazilian modern society and politics. Faoro's book became one of the reference points for the understanding of Brazilian society and influenced Brazilian and Brazilianist sociology, historiography and political science. Other books which gained such recognition were Sergio Buarque de Holanda's Raizes do Brasil,

Gilberto Freyre Gilberto de Mello Freyre (March 15, 1900 – July 18, 1987) was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter, journalist, congressman born in Recife, Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil. He is commonly associated with other ...

's Casa Grande e Senzala and Caio Prado Junior's Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo.

References

* Molossi, Luis – ''Raymundo Faoro: un bellunese che ha conosciuto "quelli di potere" in Brasile'' In: ''Revista Insieme'', March 2013, nº 171. Curitiba. 1925 births 2003 deaths 20th-century Brazilian lawyers Brazilian sociologists 20th-century Brazilian historians Brazilian people of Italian descent 20th-century Brazilian male writers People from Vacaria {{Brazil-historian-stub