Few would disagree with the no- tion that Albert Fishlow is the right person to write the book
on Brazil’s transformation over the
past 30 years. He has followed the
country since the early 1960s and contributed personally to its economic
policy debates—both in Brazil and
in the United States. He helped train
a legendary cohort of Brazilian policy analysts and even helped establish one of Brazil’s most influential
economic research institutes, the
Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Apli-cada (IPEA).
Albert Fishlow
Here, the former president underlines the second theme of the book:
Ricardo Lagos standing up to authority. The narrative is full of anecdotes
of a lifetime of assertiveness, including standing up to Pinochet, to the
Chicago Boys, and to the police officers who came to arrest him in 1986.
(“‘Sir,!’ I said sharply, offended by the
bad cop’s presumption of informality.
‘ Who authorized you to address yourself to me like this, using the ‘tu’?’.”)
Lagos also recounts standing up to
skeptics who did not believe the 1988
plebiscite could be won and, as president, standing up to military generals
when they showed insubordination,
and to U. S. President George W. Bush
over the invasion of Iraq: “Mr. President, friends are supposed to be frank.”
For those more familiar with the
presidential Ricardo Lagos, famous
for his stern rebukes and fatherly
lectures, it is easy to forget his role
during the dictatorship—a time when
Lagos and others like him showed
tremendous courage. Although many
opposition leaders were not from
the working class, they still were
not afraid to demonstrate in the
streets, participate in clandestine
meetings, go to jail, and perhaps most
famously in Lagos’ case, wave an
accusatory finger at General Pinochet
on television.
That moment on national television—“a cool night of April” in 1988—
catapulted Lagos to the national stage,
and not coincidentally, it is how he
chooses to begin his book. He had
come prepared to attack General Pinochet, asking the producer: “Of all
these cameras […] which one will be
facing me?” When Lagos saw an opening in the questioning, he faced the
previously identified camera, and
spoke directly to and pointed at Pinochet: “I told him his ambitions to
power outstripped any past leader of
Chile.” Lagos earned his stripes, and
the book has several additional vignettes of how he did so.
But even with these personal ac-
counts, it seems at times as though
the book cannot decide if it wants to
be a brief history of Chile’s democratic
transition (of which there are many)
or a memoir of a former president of
Chile, of which there are few. The his-
toric details provided should already
be fairly well known to a reader in-
terested enough in Chile to tackle a
Lagos memoir. As a memoir, it is a
bit general: at 258 pages, it is about a
third the length of Tony Blair’s mem-
oirs and about a quarter the size of
Bill Clinton’s.
Lagos is not prone to public dis-
plays of emotion. Well-known epi-
sodes are usually recounted in terms
of their policy impact rather than
their impact on the man. The author
does not delve deeper.
Robert L. Funk is deputy director
of the University of Chile’s Institute for Public Affairs, and was the
editor of El gobierno de Ricardo
Lagos: La nueva vía chilena hacia
el socialismo (Santiago, UDP, 2006).
O novo Brasil: as conquistas
políticas, econômicas, sociais e nas
relações internacionais
Saint Paul Editora, 2011
Softcover, 282 pages
REVIEWED BY PAULO VIEIRA DA CUNHA
Fishlow’s new book, O novo Brasil:
as conquistas políticas, econômicas,
sociais e nas relações internacionais
( The New Brazil: Political, Economic,
Social and International Relations
Achievements), lives up to expectations. A detailed analysis of political, economic, social, and external
change in the turbulent years of Brazil’s “New Republic,” it is also a painstakingly documented, factual and
critical presentation of Brazil’s journey from the days of Tancredo Neves
(elected president in 1985 but too sick
to take the oath of office), through the
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