Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1931- ) is a Brazilian sociologist, university professor, politician and writer. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance.
He was president of Brazil for two terms, from 1995 to 2002. He consolidated the Plano Real, established constitutional reforms, privatized state companies and instituted neoliberalism in the country.
FHC Biography
Fernando Henrique Cardoso was born in Rio de Janeiro, on June 18, 1931. As his father was a military man, in 1934 he moved with his family to São Paulo. In 1952 he graduated in Social Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP).
In 1953 he marries anthropologist Ruth Cardoso and together they have three children. That same year he specialized in sociology, becoming a doctor in 1961.
Before graduating, he was a professor at the Faculty of Economics at USP, thanks to the sociologist Florestan Fernandes, of whom he would become the first assistant in 1955.
In addition, he was also assistant to Professor Roger Baptiste and teaching analyst for the chair of Sociology, at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, in 1953.
In 1954 he was elected alumni representative, becoming the youngest member of the University Council of USP.
In 1960, he joined the direction of the Center for Industrial and Labor Sociology (Cesit), founded at USP. He attended postgraduate studies at Laboratoire de Sociologie Industrielle of the University of Paris in 1962 and 1963.
In 1964, with Military coup, Fernando Henrique, accused of subversion, was forced into exile, remaining in Chile for three years.
There, he worked at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and at the Latin American Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES). He has taught at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) and at the University of Chile.
He was invited to teach in France and moved in 1967 to Paris, where he taught at the University of Paris-Nanterre. In 1968, back in Brazil, he won the chair of Political Science at USP, returning to an academic career.
Like AI-5 he would be compulsorily retired as a professor at the university at age 37. He founded the Cebrap (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning) which would become a source of intellectual resistance to the military regime. Likewise, he teaches at several foreign universities, as he was prevented from doing so in Brazil.
In 1974, the leader of the opposition, Ulysses Guimarães, sought him out to draw up the MDB's program for the elections and later, Fernando Henrique himself would run for political office.
political career
In 1978, Fernando Henrique Cardoso became Franco Montoro's substitute for the Senate, by the MDB, with 1 million votes.
In 1983, with the election of Franco Montoro to the government of São Paulo, Fernando Henrique took over as Senator. That same year, he became an articulator of the campaign for the “Direct now”.
In 1985, he lost the elections for the mayor of São Paulo to Janio Quadros. In 1986 he was re-elected to the Senate and in that same year he founded the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB).
The new party brought members of the PMDB who were more akin to the positions of the center that criticized the president José Sarney and they no longer identified with this caption... In 1988 he was a member of the National Assembly that drafted the Constitution.
In 1992, in the government of Itamar Franco, he occupied the Foreign Affairs portfolio and a year later was appointed Minister of Finance.
Real plan
His main task in this Ministry was to contain the inflation and reorganize the economy. With a group of economists, he drew up a gradual stabilization plan.
In March 1994 the Real Unit of Value (URV) was created. This was an indexer that would daily correct prices, wages and services, as if it were a kind of currency.
On July 1st, a new currency was introduced, the real, with the value of a URV, equivalent to 2 750 cruzeiros, a currency that disappeared. With the introduction of the real, inflation was at minimum levels.
Fernando Henrique became a natural candidate for government parties in the presidential elections. Basing your campaign on the success of Real plan, won the elections in the first round. The new president took office on January 1, 1995.
First Term (1994-1998)
In addition to the Plano Real, the aspect of the government program was a series of constitutional reforms, considered essential to modernize the country and ensure economic stability.
His government was marked by the breaking of the state monopoly on oil, telecommunications and electricity and the privatization of state-owned companies.
Several difficulties arose and added to the reflexes of the Asian crisis and the Russian crisis. The government's way out was to resort to loans and technical assistance from the IMF.
State Reform and Privatizations
The Fernando Henrique government was marked by the reform of the civil service and privatizations.
In order to obtain a reduction in state spending, FHC managed to end - in part - with the stability of the public service. Thus, state governments were forced to reduce the number of employees in their agencies.
Likewise, it released the contracting of outsourced services by public and private companies, ending stable employment.
As for privatizations, they affected both state and federal companies. Banks, electricity, railways and telephone companies were privatized during FHC's eight-year government.
Second Term (1998-2002)
In order to gain support for his re-election, in 1998, the PSDB sent Congress a bill that guaranteed re-election for Executive positions.
The law was approved and, in the midst of an economic crisis, the October 1998 elections took place. With the success of the fight against inflation, Fernando Henrique managed to get re-elected.
However, with unemployment and inflation threatening Brazil again, the government makes new agreements with the IMF (International Monetary Fund).
This requires controlling public spending and increasing production as a condition for new loans. This leads to the creation of the Fiscal Responsibility Law for states and municipalities
Despite the various external crises that impacted the Brazilian economy during the four years of the second government and thanks to the continuity of the Real Plan, inflation remained low.
Even so, historical problems such as poor income distribution, social inequality and precarious health and education have not been resolved.
For this reason, in 2002, he was unable to make PSDB candidate José Serra win the elections that were won by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that year.
After the Presidency
After the end of his term, Fernando Henrique Cardoso did not run for any political office, but continues active giving interviews, publishing books and participating in debates on the political situation Brazilian. He became one of the dissenting voices of the Lula government, criticizing some of his government's decisions.
In order to preserve the legacy of his government, he created the Instituto Fernando Henrique Cardoso in São Paulo, open to anyone interested in learning more about this period of Brazilian history.
In 2008, his wife Ruth Cardoso dies, which meant a great loss for the former president. A few years later, in 2014, he would enter into a common-law marriage with a former employee of his Institute, Patricia Kundrát.
In 2013, he took office as an academic at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, occupying chair number 36 and launched in 2017, the first in a series of books called "The Presidency's Diaries" that will cover your time as president of the Republic.
Works by FHC
- Black people in Florianópolis: social and economic relations, 1955
- Capitalism and Slavery in Southern Brazil, 1962
- Social Changes in Latin America, 1969
- Dependence and Development in Latin America (with Enzo Faletto), 1970
- Politics and Development in Dependent Societies, 1971
- Industrial Entrepreneur and Economic Development in Brazil, 1972
- The Brazilian Political Model: and Other Essays, 1973
- Authoritarianism and Democratization, 1975
- Ideas and their place: essays on development theories, 1980
- The Construction of Democracy: Studies in Politics, 1993
- Hands to work, Brazil: government proposal, 1994
- For a more just Brazil: government social action, 1996
- National Defense Policy, 1996
- Sustainable development, social change and employment, 1997
- Advances Brazil: 4 more years of development for all: government proposal, 1998
- The other face of the president: speeches by senator Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 2000
- Brazil 500 years: future, present, past, 2000
- The Art of Politics, 2006
- Letters to a Young Politician, 2006
- Culture of Transgressions in Brazil, 2008
- Globalized Brazil, 2008
- Latin America: Governance, globalization and economic policies beyond the crisis, 2009
- Remembering what I wrote, 2010
- International Chess and Social Democracy, 2010
- The Sum and the Rest, 2011
- The Unlikely President of Brazil, 2013
- Thinkers Who Invented Brazil, 2013
- The Misery of Politics, 2015
- Journals of the Presidency - 1995-1996, 2015
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