Darcy Ribeiro: biography, contributions, works

Darcybrook – anthropologist, sociologist, professor, writer, indigenist and politician – he was one of the most brilliant minds in our country. Early in his career, as an anthropologist, Darcy Ribeiro dedicated-if studying the indigenous culture, having provided services as an indigenist to the Indian Protection Service.

In the 1960s, Ribeiro participated in the government of João Goulart, ahead of two ministries (Casa Civil and Education). In the 1980s, with the amnesty and the end of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, the sociologist joined the political career, having acted in defense of public and quality education, being considered today a reference in educational public policies in Brazil.

Read too: Paulo Freire – internationally renowned Brazilian educator

Biography of Darcy Ribeiro

Darcy Ribeiro from Minas Gerais was born in the city of Montes Claros, on October 26, 1922. He studied at the first (and still unique of his time) Faculty of Social Sciences in Brazil, the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo, linked to the University of São Paulo (USP). Darcy Ribeiro

formed-if anthropologist in 1946 and, between 1947 and 1956, she worked for the Indian Protection Service, which currently corresponds to the National Foundation for Indigenous Support (Funai).

In 1948, Ribeiro casorup with Berta Gleizer Ribeiro, an anthropologist and ethnologist of great importance in the construction of anthropology Brazilian. Berta Gleizer was an important figure in the constitution of Darcy Ribeiro's anthropological work (and vice versa), as both left for ethnological field studies until 1956, studying indigenous culture and offering support to villages in Brazil. In 1974, the two separated during the exile imposed by the dictatorship, when they were in Chile.

• Beginning of Darcy Ribeiro's political career

Darcy Ribeiro's political career began in the 1960s, when he participated in the short government of President João Goulart, being in charge of the Ministries of the Civil House and, later, of Education. As Minister of Education, the Brazilian sociologist participated in the foundation of the University of Brasília (UnB).

One of Brazil's leading intellectuals, Darcy Ribeiro, as a politician, defended education.[1]

In 1964, a coup imposed a civil-military dictatorship in Brazil. The new political organization imposed by the military coup resulted in the imprisonment and exile of many intellectuals, artists and politicians, such as the couple Darcy Ribeiro and Berta Gleizer, what were arrested and exiled, going to live, first, in Uruguay.

Between 1964 and 1968, Darcy wrote and Berta edited Anthropology of Civilization, work in five volumes (The Civilizing Process, The Americas and Civilization, The Dilemma of Latin America and The Brazilians, divided in Theory of Brazil and Indians and Civilization), an anthropological and critical work that narrates the birth of what is called “civilization” in Brazil and the American continent with the arrival of the colonizers.

Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)

The situation in Brazil began to deteriorate towards the end of 1968, months after Darcy Ribeiro returned here. This year the Institutional Act number 5, a dictatorial measure that permanently suspended the constitutional rights of Brazilians. Darcy Ribeiro participated, on the occasion, in a great movement against the dictatorship and AI-5, the March of the Hundred Thousand. the sociologist was arrested, spent nine months in prison, when Berta and other intellectuals started a movement to release Darcy.

When the intellectual was finally freed, he and Berta left for a second exile, passing through Venezuela, Chile and Peru. In Chile, Darcy established himself for a time as a service provider in educational affairs for the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende.

O Darcy Ribeiro's definitive return to Brazil occurred in the year 1976, when the amnesty process for political prisoners in Brazil began. On his return, Ribeiro joined the Brazilian Democratic Party (from the 1980s onwards, the opposition political parties were liberated), a traditional left-wing party. Since before the dictatorship, Darcy Ribeiro consideredif a convinced communist, using the dialectical historical materialism of Marx at various points in his work.

• Alliance with Leonel Brizola

In 1982, Darcy Ribeiro competeu– and won – in charge of vice-governor of Rio de Janeiro on the ticket led by Leonel Brizola. Participation as Brizola's deputy was not limited to waiting for the chance to govern to appear, as Darcy was actively involved in the implementation of an unprecedented education program: the Integrated Public Education Centers (CIEPs) in Rio de Janeiro, which were full-time schools.

These schools, so shunned in the past by government officials and so defended today, offered full-time, free education to low-income children and adolescents. The students had classes in the regular disciplines in the morning and, after that, they received tutoring, professional technical training, artistic education and sports initiation.

The Memorial Darcy Ribeiro is located at the University of Brasília, institution in which the sociologist participated in the foundation. [3]

CIEPs were innovative. Some of them acted as shelters for street children. Food during the period when the children were in the institution was provided by the state government, and the architecture of the buildings was developed by the renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed several buildings listed as architectural heritage of humanity, such as the set of monuments in the central axis of Brasilia.

In Leonel Brizola's second term, Darcy Ribeiro acted as secretary of Çculture of Rio de Janeiro, building the Rio de Janeiro Sambódromo (Marquês de Sapucaí), which served the parade of samba schools in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival and was a CIEP for the rest of the year.

The successor state governments to Brizola's reelection were leaving the CIEPs without investment and abandoning the full-time school project. CIEPs have become common schools in the state education system, and Darcy Ribeiro's project was completely modified. It is worth remembering a speech by the sociologist during Brizola's 1982 campaign in which he stated: “if the government does not build schools, in 20 years there will be a lack of money to build prisons”. More than a warning, Darcy Ribeiro's speech was a prediction that came true.

• Darcy Ribeiro's last years

Continuing his political career, Darcy Ribeiro elected-if Senator of the Republic, starting a history of struggle to guarantee public education in our country. With the need to rethink Brazilian public education imposed by the Federal Constitution of 1988, several politicians and intellectuals engaged in a movement to create a new Law of Guidelines and Bases of Brazilian Education (LDB). Darcy Ribeiro was one of those thinkers who participateplow of the creation of the new LDB, Law 9,394, enacted in 1996.

In 1992, the Brazilian anthropologist was named immortal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, occupying chair number 11. Recognized for his work and his political work in defense of education and against social inequality, Darcy Ribeiro has been awarded honorary doctorates endorsed by universities such as Sorbonne, University of Copenhagen, University of Uruguay and the University of Brasília, institution in which he played a special role in its foundation.

Darcy Ribeiro died on February 17, 1997 due to complications caused by a cancer he had been fighting since 1995.

See too: Florestan Fernandes – important Brazilian social scientist

The Brazilian people

The Brazilian people is the title of last and most complete book by Darcy Ribeiroabout Brazilian society. In a visionary way, Ribeiro managed to translate the brazilian culturefrog, which, at the same time that it is diverse, has a unity, which is precisely diversity. Descendants of native indigenous people, European settlers and enslaved Africans, we carry in our formation cultural origin of these three peoples, while we synthesize, in our culture, the elements left by these peoples.

Most anthropological studies tended to separate cultural elements from our background, but Darcy Ribeiro went further than reconcile all our cultural roots, which started from the first inhabitants of Brazilian lands, more than ten thousand years ago, and ends today, with the presence of other diverse cultural matrices.

The cultural unity of Brazil exists and is, paradoxically, based on multiplicity. That's what makes us a country ofand mixed cultureThe, varied and beautiful. From north to south, from acarajé to pequi, from samba to xaxado, our country has a wide range of different cultural manifestations, which include cuisine, music, literature, religion, clothing, accents and other variations that make us a people unique (with a cultural unity) and unique (because we are so diverse, unlike most other countries around the world. world).

Also access: Sérgio Buarque de Holanda – another great theorist of Brazilian cultural origins

Leonel Brizola and Darcy Ribeiro

Leonel Brizola was one of the most outstanding politicians on the spectrum of the Brazilian left. [3]

The only Brazilian politician to govern two distinct states through democratic elections, Brizola was a convinced democrat communist. The politician from Rio Grande do Sul was one of the most important leaders of the Brazilian left in the fight against the military dictatorship, incisively participating in the movement for the redemocratization of Brazil while he was governor of Rio de Janeiro, in the decade 1980.

Brizola went one of the founders of PDT (Brazilian Democratic Party), which Ribeiro joined in the 1980s. He ran for president of Brazil in 1989, in the historic first direct democratic election after the dictatorship and after the promulgation of the current Constitution.

Darcy Ribeiro and Leonel Brizola met in the 1960s, went into exile together in Uruguay in 1964, but only became friends in the 1980s, when they started working together in the political environment. Darcy Ribeiro was deputy governor of the slate for the government of Rio de Janeiro led by Brizola and was secretary of Culture in the second government of the pedetista politician.

Image credits

[1]Central Archive of the University of Brasília / commons

[2]Ebm.9 / commons

[3]Ana Nascimento/ABr / commons

by Francisco Porfirio
Philosophy teacher