Roberto de Oliveira Campos (17 April 1917 – 9 October 2001) was a Brazilian economist, writer, diplomat, politician and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He served in a number of capacities, including Brazilian ambassador to the United States and to the United Kingdom, minister of planning for the government of Castelo Branco, during the Brazilian military dictatorship, and congressman.

Biography

Early life

Campos was born in Cuiabá, in the state of

Mato Grosso Mato Grosso ( – lit. "Thick Bush") is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest by area, located in the Central-West region. The state has 1.66% of the Brazilian population and is responsible for 1.9% of the Brazilian GDP. Neighboring ...

, Brazil. Initially planning to enter the priesthood, he enrolled in a Catholic seminary in Guaxupé. Later, he received degrees in

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

and theology from a seminary in

Belo Horizonte Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropol ...

. In 1939 Campos entered the Brazilian Foreign Service. Three years later, he was sent to the United States, where he took graduate courses in economics at George Washington University and Columbia University. During this period, he also represented the Brazilian government in international economic meetings, such as the Bretton Woods conference.

Career

Campos left New York City for Brazil in 1949. From 1951 to 1953, he acted as an economic advisor in the second Getúlio Vargas administration, whose hallmarks were the paramountcy of nationalist economic policies. He was one of the supporters of the creation the

BNDES The National Bank for Economic and Social Development ( pt, Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social, abbreviated: BNDES) is a development bank structured as a federal public company associated with the Ministry of the Economy of Bra ...

(at the time BNDE — National Bank for Economic Development), a public authority whose function was to supply emerging industries with low-interest and long-term credits. After Vargas's suicide, Campos served as economic advisor to his elected successor, president Juscelino Kubitschek. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Campos presented himself as a promoter of "pragmatic, democratic nationalism," as when he tried, as Brazilian ambassador in Washington, to reach an understanding between the John F. Kennedy administration and the left-leaning João Goulart government. Eventually, disagreements with Goulart's policies led to his resignation in August 1963. Roberto Campos sided with the military regime installed by the 1964 coup, which was greatly backed by Jorge Flores, a business partner of his. The first military president, Marshall Castelo Branco, appointed Campos as his Minister of Planning — and chief economic policy maker, jointly with the Finance Minister Octavio Gouvea de Bulhões — in which capacity he enacted various pro-business and pro-foreign capital — as well as anti-organized-labour — reforms that aimed to modernize the Brazilian economy in a liberal sense. His sympathies for an inconditional pro-American foreign policy and foreign-capital-friendly economic policies earned him, already during the 1960s, his lifelong sobriquet: "Bob Fields" (an anglicized word-to-word rendering of his actual name). During the late 1960s and 1970s, he disagreed with the increasing amount of state intervention in the economy included in the process of authoritarian modernization achieved by later military administrations and remained at the sidelines, working mostly as an adviser in private enterprise. In 1975, he was appointed Brazilian ambassador to the United Kingdom, remaining in this office for nearly seven years. At the demise of the dictatorship, he regained political influence and became a politician in his own right. In 1980, soon after the end of the two-party regime, he joined the newly formed pro-government

PDS PD, P.D., or Pd may refer to: Arts and media * ''People's Democracy'' (newspaper), weekly organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) * ''The Plain Dealer'', a Cleveland, Ohio, US newspaper * Post Diaspora, a time frame in the '' Honorverse' ...

. Two years later, he won the election for an eight-year term as

senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

for his native state of

. As a member of the electoral college in the 1985 presidential election, he voted for the defeated PDS candidate, Paulo Maluf. Starting in 1991, he served as federal deputy for the State of Rio de Janeiro during two legislatures. In 1998, he was defeated when trying to return to the senate, thus ending his political career.

Later life and death

At the end of his life he tended to portray himself as solitary liberal, fighting against what he called "leftist" (i.e. Big Government) governments and policies, becoming one of the most vocal opponents of socialism in Brazil. His 1994 autobiography ''A lanterna na popa'' revises his personal biography — as well as the recent

economic history of Brazil The economic history of Brazil covers various economic events and traces the changes in the Brazilian economy over the course of the history of Brazil. Portugal, which first colonized the area in the 16th century, enforced a colonial pact with ...

— according to this vein. In 1999, he was elected member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters by a thin margin of four votes. He died of heart attack on 9 October 2001 at his apartment in Rio de Janeiro. His papers reside at the Universidade Positivo. He was married. From his marriage resulted two sons and one daughter.

Works

* (1963) ''Economia, planejamento e nacionalismo'' * (1988) ''Guia para os perplexos'' * (1994) ''A lanterna na popa'' * (1996) ''Antologia do bom senso'' * (1998) ''Na virada do milênio''

Biography

Early life

Career

Later life and death

Works

References

Further reading