THE SOCIOLOGIST

FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO

PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL

1995–2003

November 2009

IN AUGUST OF 1965, the thin and professorial Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then only thirty-four, found himself at his father's funeral, flanked by roughly a hundred fellow mourners, almost all of them clad in military green and brass. One of the more decorated men approached Cardoso's cousin, who, in turn, approached Cardoso. "The general offered condolences on behalf of the military," the cousin told him in a hushed tone. "He also said that you will need to leave Brazil as soon as possible."

The day before, Cardoso had been in Chile, watching from exile as a military junta continued to consolidate power over his native Brazil. He received a telegram that read simply, "Sapo morreu." Cardoso's father, a general, was gone; his exiled son did not even know he was sick, let alone close to death. In Brazil, by custom, the deceased are typically buried within twenty-four hours; Cardoso faced the choice of returning to Brazil despite an outstanding arrest warrant and jail sentence handed down in absentia, or missing his father's funeral.

IN MARCH OF 1963, Cardoso was among the first targeted by the new government. Within hours of the coup, the military apprehended and interrogated a young sociology professor from the University of São Paulo. Bento Prado, a colleague of Cardoso's, managed to convince his captors that he was not Fernando Henrique and earn his release. News of Prado's arrest reached Cardoso who, with the help of a friend's contacts with Air France, found a single airport north of São Paulo where his name did not appear on the no-fly list. He fled, leaving his wife and children behind.

The community of exiled Brazilians that assembled in Chile expected the military to hand power back to civilians within several years. The intervention was well precedented and welcomed by a large portion of the population who charged that democracy had led to stagnation and immense corruption. But the junta held power for the next twenty years. Cardoso's sentence, though, was overturned in 1967, when an amicable military judge, who would later be targeted by the junta himself, offered absolution and an impassioned diatribe against the dictatorship.

During the 1960s, Cardoso drew respect from abroad for his work in exile. He joined the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and his affection for Marxism and the left cooled as he watched communist East Germany and North Korea fall drastically behind capitalist counterparts. His book "Dependency and Development in Latin America," co-authored with Enzo Faletto, was one of the most important social science works of the decade. It challenged Latin American thinkers to abandon doctrinal affiliations and elaborate theories and to instead ground their work in the plausible. It rejected the notion that Latin American nations were the victims of foreign imperialism and needed to cut ties with the developed nations, while also acknowledging that their leaders have a limited scope of power, given their dependence on the United States and others. The work gained substantial notoriety and led to prestigious offers for Cardoso to teach abroad. Instead, he returned with his family to the University of São Paulo, where he taught and began a career as a dissident.

The next year, in 1969, the university announced the forced retirement of 70 professors, including Cardoso. Over the next decade, a number of his friends joined the armed resistance. He recalls in his memoir, "Social and political life tended to blend into one. On one occasion, I found myself in a car with a group of friends as we delivered a small shipment of machine guns to someone's house. This was done nonchalantly, as if it were one of several errands to be run that day."

Cardoso remained political in his dissent, however, writing commentary for magazines and running for senate in 1978. He planned the campaign as a protest. His political rights—the privilege to vote and to stand for election—had been stripped along with his position at the university, and he thought there was little chance he would be allowed onto the ballot. But when the military attempted to outlaw his campaign, the Brazilian media ran with the story—the squashed candidacy of a humble professor espousing democracy. The regime was forced to let Cardoso stand for office; he became an alternate senator representing São Paulo.

In the end, it was more likely the failure of the military to keep the economy afloat rather than the work of Cardoso or other dissidents that led to the regime's demise. But, amid the fight, Cardoso made a powerful ally: a small but fiery union leader, the seventh of eight children and the only one to complete primary school. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, as he is now known around the world, would be first a comrade to Cardoso, then a political rival, then finally a successor as president.

BRAZIL, A NATION OF nearly 200 million people and tremendous natural resources, is the world's fourth largest democracy. It remains alarmingly poor. Cardoso, first as a finance minister and then as president, pulled the fledgling economy into the modern era. He was rewarded in 2001 when Goldman Sachs's chief economist coined the term "BRIC" for the most promising middle powers: Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

The title of Cardoso's autobiography is The Accidental President. It is certainly a stretch, but there is some truth to the idea. After the public wrangled power back from the military in 1985, the presidency suffered a number of tragedies. The first president became gravely ill the day of his inauguration and died a month later. Two of the next three presidents would leave office amid impeachment, corruption, and scandal. And, in 1992, when a little-known vice president named Itamar Franco rose to the presidency, he appointed Cardoso as his foreign minister. The hapless Franco faced the same problem that had plagued the Brazilian economy for more than a decade: extraordinary inflation. He burned through three finance...