Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazilian Portuguese: [feʁˈnɐ̃du ẽˈʁiki kaʁˈdozu] ; born 18 June 1931), also known by his initials FHC (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˌɛfjaɡaˈse] ), is a Brazilian sociologist, professor, and politician who served as the 34th president of Brazil from 1 January 1995 to 1 January 2003. He was the first Brazilian president to be reelected for a subsequent term. An accomplished scholar of dependency theory noted for his research on slavery and political theory, Cardoso has earned many honors including the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation (2000) and the Kluge Prize from the US Library of Congress (2012).
A native of the city of Rio de Janeiro, he moved with his family to the city of São Paulo, where, in 1953, he married anthropologist and fellow university student Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite, with whom he had three children. FHC earned a degree in Sociology from the University of São Paulo and later became a professor emeritus at the same institution. Following the 1964 military coup, he faced persecution and went into exile in Chile and France, returning to Brazil in 1968. He taught at foreign universities and built a significant academic career, producing numerous award-winning social studies. After the impeachment of Fernando Collor, he was appointed by Itamar Franco to serve as Minister of Foreign Affairs and, subsequently, Minister of Finance. In the latter role, he led the development of the Plano Real, which stabilized the economy. Bolstered by the success of this economic plan, he was elected President of the Republic in the first round of the 1994 election.
Cardoso was inaugurated as President on 1 January 1995. He continued the economic reforms that had been initiated by the previous administration, inflation rates remained low, several state-owned companies were privatized, and market liberalization increased the country's visibility in the international market. The government succeeded in passing economic and administrative laws, including one that allowed for the reelection of executive officeholders. In 1998, he won the presidential election in the first round, becoming the first president to be reelected at the time. During his second term, international crises, a significant devaluation of the Real, an energy crisis, and other events led to a significant drop in his popularity. Currently, he heads the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, which he founded in 2004, and serves on various advisory boards for different organizations abroad, such as the Clinton Global Initiative, Brown University, and the United Nations Foundation. He is also a member of The Elders, the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and the honorary president of the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party).
Cardoso was also the 10th president of the International Sociological Association (1982–1986).
Personal and professional life
Cardoso descends from wealthy Portuguese immigrants. Some were politicians during the Empire of Brazil. He also has African ancestry, through a black great-great-grandmother and a mulatto great-grandmother. Cardoso described himself as "slightly mulatto" and allegedly said he has "a foot in the kitchen" (a nod to historical Brazilian domestic slavery).
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Cardoso lived in São Paulo for most of his life. Cardoso is a widower who was married to Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite Cardoso, an anthropologist, from 1953 until her death on 24 June 2008; they had three children. Educated as a sociologist, he was a professor of political science and sociology at the Universidade de São Paulo. and president of the International Sociological Association (ISA), from 1982 to 1986. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written several books.
Cardoso was also associate director of Studies in the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, then visiting professor at the Collège de France and later Paris Nanterre University. He later gave lectures at British and US universities including Cambridge University, Stanford University, Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is fluent in Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish, and can express himself in Italian and German.
After his presidency, he was appointed to a five-year term (2003–2008) as professor-at-large at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, where he is now on the board of overseers. Cardoso is a founding member of the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy's advisory board. In February 2005, he gave the fourth annual Kissinger Lecture on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, Washington DC on "Dependency and Development in Latin America.
In 2005, Cardoso was selected by the British magazine Prospect as being one of the world's top one hundred living public intellectuals.
Cardoso earned a bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from Universidade de São Paulo in 1952, from where he also earned a Master's and a Doctorate in Sociology. His doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Florestan Fernandes, examined the institution of slavery in Southern Brazil, critiquing, from a Marxist perspective, the dominant approach of Gilberto Freyre to the topic. It has since become a classic on the subject. Cardoso also received the Livre-Docência degree in 1963, the most senior level of academic recognition in Brazil, also from Universidade de São Paulo. In 1968, he received the title of Cathedratic Professor, holding the chair of Political Science at Universidade de São Paulo.
As he continued his academic career abroad in Chile and France after the tightening of the Brazilian military dictatorship, Cardoso published several books and papers on state bureaucracy, industrial elites and, particularly, dependency theory. His work on dependency would be his most acclaimed contribution to sociology and development studies, especially in the United States. After presiding the International Sociological Association from 1982 to 1986 Cardoso was selected as a Fulbright Program 40th anniversary distinguished fellow and in that capacity was a visiting scholar and lectured at Columbia University on democracy in Brazil. Cardoso currently gives speeches and classes abroad. In June 2013 he was elected as a member of Academia Brasileira de Letras. He said his election was due to recognition for his academic achievements, rather than his political career.
After his return to Brazil, Fernando Henrique engaged with the burgeoning democratic opposition to the military-dominated regime both as an intellectual and as a political activist. He became Senator from São Paulo for the former Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) in 1982, replacing Franco Montoro, the newly elected governor of São Paulo. In 1985, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of São Paulo against former President Jânio Quadros. Ahead in the polls, he let himself be photographed in the mayor's chair before the elections. Some attribute his loss to this episode.
Elected to the Senate in 1986 for the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), which MDB became after re-democratization, he joined a group of PMDB parliamentarians who left that party to found the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) after previously held PMDB positions shifted to the right when the party filled with politicians who had collaborated with the dictatorship. As a senator, Cardoso took part in the 1987–1988 National Constituent Assembly that drafted and approved Brazil's current Constitution in the wake of the country's re-democratization. In the early stages of the Constituent Assembly's work (from February to March 1987), Cardoso led the committee that drafted the internal rules of procedure, including the procedural rules governing the drafting of the Constitution itself. These rules of procedure were adopted by the Assembly and published on 25 March 1987. Until 1992, Cardoso served as Leader of the PSDB in the Senate. From October 1992 to May 1993, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Itamar Franco (PMDB).