Interviewed on television by Jô Soares, sometime in the 1980s, Maria da Conceição Tavares vehemently disputes, as almost always, the “invitation”, made live by the comedian, to take over the financial portfolio of the Brazilian government then headed by Jose Sarney. “No, it’s a horrible position and I, with this temperament, couldn’t have it, what I want is to be the president of the Central Bank, to have the key to the vault, because only people associated with the bandits are appointed to that position,” replies the economist, now 93 years old, with a cigarette in hand and a strong Portuguese accent, coming from Portugal, already influenced by the Carioca accent.
The video, considered surgically timely at a time when President Lula da Silva criticized the head of the central bank, Bolsonarist-sympathizer Roberto Campos Neto, over the 13.5% interest rate, is one of dozens other from the Economist, rampant on the web these days.
On Twitter, the “Acervo de Maria da Conceição Tavares” page, managed by a 21-year-old law student, has more than 60,000 followers, and the almost eponymous “Acervo Maria da Conceição Tavares”, created by a social science student and singer, nearly 50 thousand. On TikTok, excerpts from lessons of the Portuguese hoarse voice are transformed into memes that are shared to exhaustion. The “repetition”fan cam“, videos that bring together images of someone famous to the sound of songs, dedicated to the economist by the networks. And the videos of her classes at the Institute of Economics at the University of Campinas, where she taught, are the most viewed on the setting.
But Conceição, as her friends treat her, is much more than a pop product recently discovered by young leftists fascinated by the power of her speech, the colorfulness of her metaphors and often the profanity she didn’t bother to contain . . , in lessons and interviews, such as the one with Jô Soares.
“She wrote groundbreaking texts about the Brazilian economy,” says economist and professor Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo, also known in Brazil as President of Palmeiras, from 2009 to 2011. “Today it has become very popular because young people have discovered it on the Internet videos of her lessons, as well as interviews, and she was very unique in her expositions, she spoke with passion, she made funny images”.
“She was an assistant to Otávio de Bulhões at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Brazil, lived with leading economists, both leftists, such as Celso Furtado, and conservatives, such as Roberto Campos. [por curiosidade, o avô do atual presidente do Banco Central]and wrote fundamental texts for the Brazilian economic debate’, continues Belluzzo. , like all left-wing economists of the time, are very limited”.
“Although she continued to protest, she would eventually go to Chile [onde trabalhou no governo de Salvador Allende] until I returned to the University of Campinas, where I had the honor of sharing with her about 20 articles that made the so-called “School of Campinas” famous”.
Maria da Conceição Almeida Tavares was born in Anadia, in 1930, grew up in Lisbon, in a house where her parents welcomed refugees from the Spanish Civil War, studied mathematics and chemistry and was pregnant with her first husband with her daughter Laura ( later Bruno born), emigrated to Brazil in 1954, fleeing the Salazar regime.
For Glória Moraes, economist and university professor, “Conceição is a blessing”. “She was my economics teacher, one day I presented a group work [George] Marshall, she didn’t like it, she wanted me to interrupt the reading, but I insisted I go through to the end and it was in this atmosphere of tension that we got close,” the former student laughs. “Today, at 70 years old, my relationship with her, 93, goes way beyond teacher-student, we’re so close I even have a picture of her with Lula on the wall at home”.
“She was essential in the “Movement for the Renovation of Economists in Rio de Janeiro”, a movement that opposed the military dictatorship, she was the president and the star, our whole generation was very marked by her and her works are very topical, when no one was talking about financial capitalism, she had already set her sights on the resumption of US hegemony over the dollar and wrote a seminal academic paper on the subject”. “But in addition to academic work, both economists and non-economists eagerly awaited her articles in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, few people manage to do that, economists even less,” says Glória.
Paradoxically, at the time when her popularity exploded thanks to the internet, Conceição was no longer a regular presence in the media due to her age. She retires to Nova Friburgo, in the mountain region of Rio, where she lives peacefully with her daughter Laura and is visited by her son Bruno, her daughter-in-law, her grandson, her great-grandson and numerous friends and admirers. but without, much to her chagrin, the inseparable cigarette, by non-negotiable medical order. “And our visits must be short, because she is old, weak, she gets tired easily, but of course I called her on the 24th, it was her birthday,” says Glória.
Being born on April 24, the eve of the revolution in her native country, is seen as an irony in the life of a woman who fled the Portuguese dictatorship only to be arrested in Brazil in 1974, another irony. She was released after a few days by order of President Ernesto Geisel himself, at the request of Mário Henrique Simonsen, then Minister of Finance. “Hello, Mário, how are you? I won’t even thank you for doing nothing more than your duty,” Conceição wrote to him in her own style.
However, the economist was already a media phenomenon before the Internet, as evidenced by the character “Maria da Recession Necklaces”, created in her honor by the comedian Chico Anysio for the program A Escolinha do Professor Raimundo. At the time, a young Fernando Haddad, now Treasury Secretary, was an avid reader of her articles, as were Nelson Barbosa, Guilherme Mello or Laura Carvalho, the leading economists in the country within the PT job, who refer to her as ” master” or “guru”.
Lula, in turn, is an acknowledged admirer of Conceição, with whom he has met regularly since his days as a trade unionist and deputy to discuss economics and politics. “He is a folk genius,” the economist, PT activist and former party MP used to say about the current president.
In 2010, Conceição supported the election of Dilma Rousseff, “a stupidly intelligent woman with an open heart”, but was photographed between her and competitor José Serra, from the rival PSDB, because he was also her former student and apprentice.
“I read almost all the lyrics she wrote. I may have disagreed with her more than once, but I must admit that she was a great idealist,” Fernando Henrique Cardoso said of Conceição.
Despite being deeply involved in the current situation of her adopted country, Portugal is not just a distant memory in Conceição’s life. “We were there together in 1994, many places still had a strong impression on her. She talked a lot about her father, her uncle, Anadia, where she was born, and Lisbon, where she studied chemistry and mathematics,” says her friend Gloria . “On the other hand, he sometimes spoke of Salazar and compared the dictatorships, from there and from here, he remembered that the Portuguese was longer, heavier, sadder, in ours people, in spite of everything, gathered more, they celebrated more, there was more affection, she noted”.
When he turned 80, it wasn’t “Happy Birthday to You” at the party, but “Grândola, Vila Morena”. And Lula’s victory, friends say, cheered her up as she feared she was born under Salazar and would die under Bolsonaro.
Source: DN
