Sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, considered one of the deans of Brazilian left-wing intellectuality, died this Wednesday, 10th, in São Paulo, at the age of 85, of an undisclosed cause. Chico de Oliveira, as he became known, was one of the founders of PT and worked at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at USP (FFLCH-USP), where he was a professor since 1988, in the Department of Sociology. Graduated in social sciences from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) in 1956, with a doctorate in sociology from the University of São Paulo, the sociologist received the Jabuti award in 2004 with the work Crítica à Razão Dualista – O Ornitorrinco, published by Boitempo.
Born in Recife on November 7, 1933, Chico de Oliveira worked alongside Celso Furtado at Sudene (Superintendence for Development of the Northeast) in the years before the 1964 coup. Arrested for the first time, upon being released, he fled the country. He returned in 1969 to work at Cebrap (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning) with Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Octávio Ianni. An important player in the opposition to the military regime, he was arrested and tortured again in 1974. In the 80s he was involved in the fight for redemocratization and the creation of the PT. One of the biggest critics of FHC's governments in the 90s, he also broke with the PT after Lula's election in 2002.
Cebrap, an institute that was chaired by Oliveira between 1993 and 1995, issued an official statement lamenting the news of the sociologist's death. “Author of classic texts on Brazilian social sciences such as Critique of Dualist Reason, Chico de Oliveira was a rigorous and sophisticated intellectual who participated in research that shaped the Brazilian debate and that trained generations of new researchers”, says the note.
See below interviews given by Chico de Oliveira to Jornal da Unicamp:
Francisco de Oliveira links reform to market interests (PDF version)
Sociologists map possible utopias (PDF version)
Is freedom of expression at risk?
Chico de Oliveira and the platypus egg
