The pursuit of development: reactions among the Rio de Janeiro press to Celso Furtado’s social thought (1961-1962)

Abstract

Based on a reading and analysis of the news sources in its editorials, the following article identifies the repercussions of the social thought and actions of Celso Furtado as an intellectual and state operator in the Rio de Janeiro press. With the Cold War and anti-Communist culture pervading Brazil representing the context of the early years of the 1960s, such a scenario is responsible for the reactions to Furtado’s positions in his project for developing the country. We also discuss the nuances of the economist’s thought in light of his education and his reflections on Brazilian and Latin American societies. The attacks on this project by the middle and upper classes of Brazilian society deemed the Northeast to be a ‘dangerous” region, concerned as they were with the specter of communism in the reforms’ agenda, particularly that of agricultural reform. The political and ideological nature shared by the Brazilian elites and their clear opposition to the developmentalist theories reverberated in the discourse of the editorials published in the Jornal do Brasil and the Tribuna da Imprensa newspapers from 1961 to 1962.