Cardoso, Fernando Henrique

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1931- ), Brazilian sociologist and politician, President of Brazil (1994- ). As author of 21 books, Cardoso has been an important intellectual figure in Brazil and abroad, especially since the late 1960s, when Dependency and Development in Latin America, which he co-wrote with Enzo Faletto, appeared. Born in Rio de Janeiro, home to Brazil's elite and its former capital, Cardoso rose to prominence in São Paulo, the country's financial and industrial centre. His career as a scholar and university professor began in 1952. By the early 1960s, his prolific writing and leftist views brought him to prominence within Brazil. After a military coup in 1964, he was forced into exile for three years, lecturing and working in France, Argentina, and Chile. In Chile he served as adjunct director of the Latin American Centre for Economic and Social Planning (CEPAL) from 1964 to 1967. Returning to Brazil, he taught at the University of São Paulo until 1969, when he was arrested by the military authorities and banned from teaching in Brazilian universities. In 1969 he founded the Brazilian Planning and Analysis Centre (Cebrap) in São Paulo, which served as a focus for a range of progressive intellectuals and academics. As Cebrap's director, a post which he held until 1982, Cardoso, who is fluent in French, English, and Spanish, lectured at the Sorbonne, Paris; the University of Oxford; and at the universities of California, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale. Cardoso became involved in politics in the late 1970s, acting as an adviser to the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). From 1983 until 1992 he served in the Brazilian Senate as a representative from São Paulo. In 1988 he participated in the founding of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), the party under whose banner he was elected President of Brazil in 1994. As Finance Minister, between April 1993 and April 1994, Cardoso was credited with the conception and implementation of the "Plan Real", which reduced the country's monthly inflation rate from nearly 50 per cent to 1.5 per cent in less than a year. The success of that programme is viewed by many as the single most important factor in Cardoso's resounding election victory over Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who represented the Workers Party of the Left (PT), in the presidential elections held in October 1994. Inaugurated to the presidency, on January 1, 1995, as the 38th President of the Brazilian Republic, Cardoso promised to implement free-market reforms including deregulation, privatization of state-owned firms, pension reform, increased trade and investment opportunities, and fiscal responsibility in government. Cardoso also promised to spend billions to provide educational opportunities and basic health care for those lacking it.

In late 1995 he began to implement his promised reforms, in the face of stiff opposition from entrenched interest groups, and embarked on policies of fiscal responsibility. In his first year in office he signed a presidential decree that took possession of about 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of land from large, private estates and reallocated it to more than 3,600 poor families. The following year he began proceedings to change the constitution to allow the president to serve two consecutive terms, and in 1997 he pushed through major reforms of the civil service, intended to help Brazil's finances, and tried to reform the pension system for the same reason in 1998. At the end of 1997 he introduced economic austerity measures to stabilize stock markets and protect the Brazilian currency. In October 1998, Cardoso was elected to a second four-year presidential term, the first Brazilian head of state to be re-elected. In November he agreed a rescue package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rescue Brazil from financial crisis.