Caio da Silva Prado Júnior (February 11, 1907November 23, 1990) was a Brazilian historian, geographer, writer, philosopher and politician. His works inaugurated a new historiographic tradition in Brazil, identified with

Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...

, which led to new interpretations of Brazilian colonial society. 20th-century Brazilian philosophers Brazilian Marxist writers

Biography

Caio Prado graduated with a degree in

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

from Faculdade do Largo de São Francisco,

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

in 1928, where he would later become a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of Political Economy. He was politically active during the 1930s and 1940s, including during the 1930 Revolution. In 1933, he published his first work - ''Evolução Política do Brasil'' (Political Evolution of Brazil) - an attempt to understand the country's political and social history. In 1934 he took part in the foundation of Brazilian Geographers Association. After a trip to the Soviet Union, at the time under the harshest Stalinist authoritarianism, he published ''URSS - um novo mundo'' (Soviet Union - a New World), which was banned by

Getúlio Vargas Getúlio Dornelles Vargas (; ; 19 April 1882 – 24 August 1954) was a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as the 14th and 17th president of Brazil, from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Due to his long and contr ...

' government's censorship. He then joined the Aliança Nacional Libertadora which he chaired in São Paulo. In 1942 he published the classic ''Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo - Colônia'' (Formation of Contemporary Brazil - Colony), which should have been the first part of a work on Brazilian historical evolution. However, the following volumes were never written. In 1945 he was elected ''deputado estadual'' for the ''Brazilian Communist Party''. He published the newspaper ''A Platéia'' and, in 1943, with Arthur Neves and

Monteiro Lobato José Bento Renato Monteiro Lobato (; 18 April 1882 – 4 July 1948) was one of Brazil's most influential writers, mostly for his children's books set in the fictional Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Farm) but he had been previous ...

, he founded Editora Brasiliense (Brasiliense Publishing House), for which, later, he published ''Revista Brasiliense'', between 1956 and 1964. After 1964, he was persecuted by the military dictatorship. In 1966 he was elected Intellectual of the Year by the União Brasileira de Escritores, following the publication of ''A revolução brasileira'' (Brazilian Revolution).

Works

The most important works of Caio Prado Junior are: * 1933: ''Evolução política do Brasil'' * 1934: ''URSS - um novo mundo'' * 1942: '' Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo'' (translated as ''The colonial background of modern Brazil'' Berkeley : University of California Press, 1967) * 1945: ''História Econômica do Brasil'
* 1952: ''Dialética do Conhecimento'' * 1953: ''Evolução Política do Brasil e Outros Estudos'' * 1954: ''Diretrizes para uma Política Econômica Brasileira'' * 1957: ''Esboço de Fundamentos da Teoria Econômica'' * 1959: ''Introdução à Lógica Dialética (Notas Introdutórias)'' * 1962: ''O Mundo do Socialismo'' * 1966: ''A Revolução Brasileira'' * 1971: ''Estruturalismo de Lévi-Strauss - O Marxismo de Louis Althusser'' * 1972: ''História e Desenvolvimento'' * 1979: ''A Questão Agrária no Brasil'' * 1980: ''O que é Liberdade'' * 1981: ''O que é Filosofia'' * 1983: ''A Cidade de São Paulo''

External links

Economic history of Brazil, author Caio Prado Junior, in Portuguese

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Júnior, Caio Prado 1907 births
1990 deaths People from São Paulo 20th-century Brazilian historians University of São Paulo alumni Academic staff of the University of São Paulo Brazilian geographers Marxist historians 20th-century geographers 20th-century Brazilian philosophers