Third rector is chosen
in a climate of conflagration

NNOBODY EXPECTED that the result of the internal consultation to choose the new rector would be taken into account by the Council, much less by the governor, but it still took place, according to the planned calendar, on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of October 1981. Government intervention in the succession process only exacerbated the academic community's predilection for names of the resistance. Educator Paulo Freire, moral flag of the movement, topped the list of the most voted despite having declared, before and during the election, that he had no intention of taking office: his purpose was only to “mark a position”. The list also showed that the “Moon case” was not enough to destroy anyone's reputation, since its three protagonists – Maurício Prates, Eduardo Chaves and Yaro Burian – were in second, fifth and sixth place respectively. None of the other two who completed the six-fold list had any chance of being chosen: Carlos Franchi, third place, was registered with the DOPS and carried the stigma of “former intellectual leader of a communist cell”; Cerqueira Leite, fourth place, had already been rejected once by the military and had fought with Maluf, whose secretary he resigned in 1980.

On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that the official list would anoint anyone other than the list of 17 candidates listed by Adunicamp.1 The attractions of power, in that turbulent environment, were not so many as to produce unexpected suitors. Clamors for the result of the consultation to be respected echoed in the void. It was certain that the Council would make its own list. Thus, little attention was paid to a manifesto distributed by physicist José Ellis Ripper, ninth placed on the unofficial list, in which he cited the precedent of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, whose rector had been elected from a list prepared after carrying out a similar consultation, a procedure accepted by the federal government without any major problems. There was also the example of PUC in São Paulo, but there the results had been disastrous. If other voices were raised to defend the “democratic path” of choosing university leaders, no one paid any attention to them. The name of Zeferino Vaz, who died ten months earlier, was even invoked in defense of the consultation process, but the “rebels” did not count on the unexpected interest of his daughter Marly de San Juan in the topic. Marly, who had always stayed away from University affairs, like her brothers Sérgio and Fernando, considered the speculation an act of “betrayal of my father’s thinking, which was always so clear”. And he took out from his storage an old article by Zeferino published in Jornal do Brasil, in which he lamented that, “under the pretext of democratization, the intention is to make students, employees and professors elect the six-fold list to choose rectors or directors of faculties.”

...students don't know yet, they're getting ready to find out. (...) If you still don't even know the science you are studying, how can you distinguish who is the best, culturally and ethically, to lead an organization as complex as a university?(...) What's even worse is what employees do administrative voters of college rectors and directors. After all, servants, laboratory technicians, drivers, typists, ushers, doormen, accountants and valets carry out secondary activities, which are certainly important in the life of a university, but they understand nothing about the core activities, that is, the sciences, the arts, literature and humanities, therefore not being able to distinguish the good from the regular or the bad, in this case.

The controversy that bothered the Rectory, however, concerned something else. With each passing day, the legal argument that had resulted in the dismissal of eight unit directors became weaker. In this aspect, Ripper's manifesto was more accurate: neither the statutes nor the general regulations of Unicamp clearly defined the requirement for a full professor to compete for the position of unit director nor for that of dean. Proof of this was that the official list of rectors sent to governor Paulo Egydio Martins in 1978 included several candidates who were not competitive and that did not mean that the list was rejected. The State Education Council's erroneous interpretation, if it was an error, came from the fact that such a requirement existed explicitly in the statutes of USP and Unesp, although not in Unicamp.

The following week, six jurists looked into the case on the initiative of Dalmo de Abreu Dallari and issued an opinion on the matter. The conclusion did not differ from Ripper's, but this time it was an expert opinion, which could not be ignored.2 It turned out that, given the personal freedom with which Zeferino had managed Unicamp for twelve years, three types of full professor: permanent professor, who had taken the exam at another university; the stable, which did not hold the position but rather the level of holder; and the contractor who, although neither permanent nor stable, performed teaching and research functions in the same way. Everyone, according to the opinion of the notables, was capable of assuming the position of unit director: “The position of director of an institute or college, at Unicamp, is not exclusive to an effective director, and can be held by any professor”, simply because “the statutes and general regulations only require the status of full professor, with no logical or legal basis for considering a reservation in favor of permanent professors in this case”.

As, in practice, no intervenor was able to take over, the crisis was heading towards an impasse that was beginning to seriously worry the government. Plínio, hostage to his own error, was paralyzed. He even fell ill and canceled important meetings. The resistance group, which was practically the majority, was interested in the chaotic situation reaching its limit – to force the demoralization of Maluf, the dishonor of the internal establishment and the dismantling of the intervention. The economists centered around João Manuel, however, had a different opinion. They thought there was a third way, a path that led to the end of the intervention without having to subject the government to the humiliation of going back. Without interlocution at Palácio dos Bandeirantes, they appealed to the industrialist Dilson Funaro, with whom João Manuel and Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo had worked in the 70s, and who was a friend of Maluf and the head of the Civil House, Calim Eid.

— We need to negotiate a way out, otherwise Unicamp will end.

That's what they told Funaro. This was agreed with Calim Eid, the head of the Civil House, who tried to persuade the governor, who did not like to waste time with concerns that did not yield votes. For a crisis located in the interior of the State, even in the mouth of the Capital, this was causing too much noise. Luiz Ferreira Martins, his Secretary of Education and an active agent of the crisis, even proposed to an impatient Maluf a radical solution to put an end to the mess they had found themselves in: incorporating the two youngest public higher education institutions in the State, Unicamp and Unesp, the oldest, the University of São Paulo. USP, already established and consolidated, would thus follow the model of the University of Paris with its plethora of schools ranging from the Panthéon to Bobigny. The idea, which did not prosper, was leaked to the campuses of the two universities and increased panic in Plínio's office, which was already sufficiently weakened. That day, however, it was about lifting the ban. Funaro came back with the formula:

— The intervention ends if there is a competitive professor to occupy your institute.

João and Belluzzo understood that he was referring to the IFCH, their unit, but the reasoning also applied to the other units. Economics in particular had a solution in character in the figure of Carlos Lessa, who was a full professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and maintained a part-time commitment at Unicamp, where he taught one class a week. After being consulted, Lessa accepted the thankless task and on the same day took a plane to Campinas. Plínio, warned, considered the solution a Columbus egg. He immediately addressed a ceremonial letter to the units in which he proposed a conciliatory solution: that the boards of the affected units nominate full professors from their staff or even external professors (when there were no internal professors), to replace the dismissed directors. The lists should contain three to six names, “listed in alphabetical order, with no expression of preference”.

What could have put an end to the crisis made it considerably worse. Resistance leaders reacted badly to the third way. By the deadline determined by the Rectory for the lists to be delivered, none had been sent to the office. At IFCH, an assembly to deliberate on the “Lessa solution” almost ends in a fight. Belluzzo and Franchi only did not come to blows because Carlos Vogt came between them. Rubem Alves accused Lessa of playing an unworthy role. Belluzzo, whose apparent calm hides a sanguine temperament, demanded explanations from Rubem, who went to the microphone and used his usual parable method:

— That’s how it is in politics in Minas: we go forward and the enemy goes backwards. Now I'm learning a new one: we advance backwards and the enemy retreats forward.

The rebels, who dominated all campus assemblies except for the IFCH and Medicine, wanted the formal dismissal of the interveners and the return of their positions to the dismissed directors. They could not accept the economists' argument according to which – they said – a “democratic” intervener is preferable to a “non-democratic” intervener. Economists, in turn, argued that the appointment of trusted names from the units to replace the dismissed directors would, in practice, determine the end of the intervention. The assembly ended without conciliation between the two groups, but with Lessa being promoted to the position of director of Human Sciences. The next day, the walls of the campus were spray-painted with “Lessa out, intervener!” which would become a slogan of protest for the next four months and deepen the gap between economists and social scientists, dug slowly and laboriously since the times of the philosopher Fausto Castilho, creator of the unit.

At the beginning of December, the Lessa solution was hit by a new legal incident that no one expected. Chaves, with the help of lawyer Ana Maria Tebar, his active spearhead in the dean's office, filed a writ of mandamus against the act of his dismissal. The action, reinforced with an opinion from Dallari denouncing “the rector’s discretion and abuse of power” – based on the joint opinion of six jurists from São Paulo –, found its way to the Campinas Forum at the hands of the labor judge Waldemar Thomazine, member of the Justice and Peace Commission. The injunction granted by judge Álvaro Érix Ferreira, recently arrived in the city, fell like a bomb in Plínio's lap. The order was to reinstate Chaves immediately. At least within the scope of the Faculty of Education, the third way could no longer be applied: the “elected” director was back in his post. The campus was still celebrating this first victory when five other directors, encouraged by the injunction obtained by Chaves, also decided to take the legal route.4 On Christmas Eve, finding itself suffocated by a rain of injunctions, the office did not trust in the competence of its lawyers and hired, without bidding and for a sum that was never revealed, the panel of a former Minister of Justice – Alfredo Buzaid – who in his time, during the Médici government, was famous for installing prior censorship of books, newspapers and magazines. The scare increased with the second instance decision, issued in São Paulo, also in favor of the directors, despite the successive appeals filed by Buzaid at the Court of Justice. With the forensic holidays, the case was destined to drag on for months, which did not happen because, from the injunctions to the inauguration of the new rector, there was a negotiated solution.

The partial victory of the directors in court even gave the impression, for a brief period, that the rebels could also triumph in the election for rector. It did not seem at all impossible that, given Paulo Freire's lack of interest – a name that would be difficult for Maluf to swallow –, Maurício Prates would emerge as a viable name. Economists did not think so, as at this point in the legal battle they were already looking for an alternative solution. For them, the highlight was doctor José Aristodemo Pinotti. If he had against him the fact that he was eleventh on the community's list, Pinotti, on the other hand, had administrative experience, had been the director of the Faculty of Medicine twice, was an academic with international transit and was not ideologically established. . His proximity to senator Orestes Quércia, with whom he was a partner in some business, only reinforced the option of economists, mostly linked to the PMDB. With the election for governor approaching, in which the candidacy of André Franco Montoro (and more remotely of Quércia) seemed very well underway, it was convenient to see the election of the rector of Unicamp in the same context. After all, the institutional crisis could be seen as a consequence of the disconnect between the government and the university. The consensus on Pinotti's name, initially constructed without the prior knowledge of the anointed one, took place at a table at Giovanetti, a bar in the center of Campinas famous for its sandwiches, where they sat, in addition to João Manuel, Wilson Cano , Belluzzo and Osmar Marchese. The group also included economists Paulo Renato Souza, Maria da Conceição Tavares, Ferdinando Figueiredo, Paulo Baltar and Liana Cardoso, as well as sociologist Geraldo Giovanni. Galvanized by João Manuel, the economists soon reached an agreement. After the discussion, João went to the phone and called Pinotti. With a booming voice, he announced:

— Pinotti, you are our candidate.

In the following days there were new meetings, with the presence of the candidate – at the Holliday Inn hotel, at the Bahamas hotel, at the Gramado stud farm, where Pinotti lived, and at the homes of one or the other – to settle details and set up the strategy of convincing the candidate. Board of Directors. There was a first obstacle to overcome: Calim Eid, the head of the Civil House, would like to see the dentist Antonio Carlos Neder, his colleague from Piracicaba, rector. When the group tried to dissuade Neder, he was initially inflexible:

— I won't give up.

He changed his mind after two hours of careful conversation: if he reconsidered, he would gain one of the coordinators, in addition to the promise of succeeding Pinotti in four years.5 This would not prevent him from being on the list, but his sponsor should be discouraged. Another problem arose when Cerqueira Leite, who was not in love with Pinotti, tried to introduce the name of the biologist Crodowaldo Pavan. It took a meeting between Pinotti and João with Pavan to dissuade him from the intention. In the cabinet, Paulo Gomes Romeo also preferred anyone other than Pinotti: he rightly feared being removed from the core of power. That's why he kept repeating it throughout the Rectory's corridors, like a prediction that corresponded to an almost-wish:

— I think the Council meeting is going to get messy. An appeal will definitely be filed.

It referred to the articulations of the so-called democratic directors, encouraged by their first victories in judicial courts in Campinas and São Paulo. In fact, there was a strong rumor that the rebel group would file a writ of mandamus on the morning of February 19, 1982, the day of the Council election, to prevent the meeting from taking place. Meanwhile, Pinotti faced difficulties on the external flank: some military sectors disliked his relations with Quercia. Furthermore, a visit to China in 1977, with the aim of studying the Chinese health system, in a delegation of Brazilian doctors, weighed against him. The DOPS had received anonymous letters denouncing the “political purposes” of this trip and, worse, claiming it was financed by Quércia. Pinotti's folder at the São Paulo DOPS also contained a copy of a check for 200 thousand dollars with Quércia's signature in favor of Pinotti (according to him, reimbursement of a loan he had made to the senator). The episode explains why, two years later, the wife of General Moraes Rego, at the time head of the Military House, was practically removed from the operating table where she was to undergo an ovary extraction – because Pinotti, the surgeon, “wasn't very seen in military circles.” The path was only cleared thanks to the mediation of civilians who worked in the barracks and spheres of military power, such as the gynecologist José Ribeiro, from Brasília, a friend of General Otávio Medeiros, head of the National Information Service. Other mediators were judge Marino Falcão, from Campinas, who worked with Buzaid; gastroenterologist José Bittar, whose patients included the commander of the Campinas Armored Infantry Battalion, Colonel Manoel Almeida; and the bionic mayor of Paulínia, José Antônio Maranho, who maintained good traffic in command of the II Army.

The day of the Council meeting was tense. As a precaution, Pinotti commissioned one of his trusted lawyers, Guido Ivan de Carvalho, to clog the civil courts of Campinas with a mountain of petitions. The objective was to make a possible rebel mandate unfeasible. To prevent the invasion of the Council by employees and students, help was requested from the Federal Police superintendent, Romeu Tuma, who sent a squad of Military Police whose truck was hidden behind a poultry farm near the campus. Camargo, the ineffable former DOPS delegate, went further: he ordered seven agents from São Paulo and posted them at the entrance and exit of the building. The counselors, upon entering, were identified by the doorman Manuel. Camargo, attentive to everything, noticed that the agents had revolvers under their shirts. He chirped:

— This is already a bit much. Nobody here carries a gun.

The agents were reluctant but placed their weapons in a drawer that Camargo locked and kept the key in his pocket, keeping it there throughout the meeting. Pinotti was elected in the first ballot with the vote of 21 of the 31 councilors. The second ballot paid Pinotti's moral debt to Neder, giving him 16 votes, and in the third, Cerqueira Leite and gastroenterologist Luiz Sérgio Leonardi tied, also with 16 votes. The list was completed with the names of Carlos Franchi and civil engineer Morency Arouca.6

Plínio commissioned economist Jorge Miglioli to count the votes. When Pinotti's name was announced, around six-thirty in the afternoon, the president of the State Education Council, Moacyr Expedito Marret, one of the epigones of the intervention crisis, shouted for the entire room to hear:

— Habemus Papam!

Then everything went into a dizzying rhythm. It was as if the dragon of crisis was being speared. A driver on standby picked up the list and sped off along the Bandeirantes highway, heading to the government palace.

Despite their discontent, there were few protests from the so-called democratic people. Chaves limited himself to contesting the list and Rubem Alves accused the Council of remaining oblivious to the community's wishes. None of this had any effect on the governor's verdict. At a quarter to seven in the afternoon, a telex was sent to the Official State Press: it was important that the Official Gazette printed the appointment the following day. Prates, who under other circumstances could have been chosen, appeared disenchanted. In public he said:

— I declare myself to be in the process of maturing. Economists are the ones who know things. I no longer hear the songs of liberation.

In private, he said something less lyrical to Franchi:

— We are all poets. From now on, I will be a cynic.7

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1 The community list, in order of placement, was as follows: 1) Paulo Freire; 2) Maurício Prates; 3) Carlos Franchi; 4) Rogério Cerqueira Leite; 5) Yaro Burian; 6) Eduardo Chaves; 7) Hermano Tavares; 8) Jorge Miglioli; 9) José Ellis Ripper; 10) Carlos Argüello; 11) José Aristodemo Pinotti; 12) Antonio Carlos Neder; 13) Morency Arouca; 14) Antonio Muniz de Rezende; 15) Hélio Drago Romano; 16) Atílio José Giarola; 17) Roberto Moretti.

2 The six jurists were as follows: José Carlos Dias, former president of the Brazilian Bar Association; Eduardo Muylaert Antunes, member of the Board of the same entity; and professors from the Faculty of Law at USP Fábio Comparato, Miguel Reale Júnior, Tércio Sampaio Ferraz and Dalmo de Abreu Dallari, professor at USP.

3 Letter from rector Plínio Alves de Moraes dated October 30, 1981 to the associate directors.

4 Directors André Villalobos, Ayda Ignez Arruda, Carlos Argüello, Maurício Prates and Aécio Pereira Chagas obtained a favorable injunction in the weeks following Chaves' resumption. Two of the exonerated directors, Yaro Burian and Carlos Franchi, preferred not to use the judicial route. The unit coordinated by Yaro, the Institute of Arts, was still being implemented and as such he was not appointed director. And Franchi was not exactly director, but rather a replacement for critic Antonio Candido, who had left his position in 1978.

5 Pinotti's successor would be the economist Paulo Renato Souza, later Minister of Education during the two terms of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government.

6 Educator Paulo Freire, first placed on the community list, did not receive enough votes to be included on the official list. Also voted into the Council were biologists Crodowaldo Pavan and Paulo de Toledo Artigas, electronics engineers Maurício Prates, Hermano Tavares and Yaro Burian, doctors Carlos Eduardo Negreiros de Paiva, Walter August Hadler, José Lopes de Faria and Paulo Gomes Romeo, the economist Ferdinando de Oliveira Figueiredo and dentist Pedro Bertolini.

7 Statement by Eduardo Chaves on his personal website (www.chaves.com.br) describes the state of mind he took in the post-intervention period: “The result of the crisis, as far as I am concerned, was disillusionment about many colleagues and considerable cynicism about university politics. After the crisis, I accomplished little for the Faculty, both externally and internally, because I was deeply discouraged by the dirty political game of which I was a witness and victim, and which convinced me that, even within the Faculty, there were people willing to promote, underneath of the cloth, its political agenda, and even political party, at the expense of the expressed will of the absolute majority of the UNICAMP community, in general, and the Faculty of Education, in particular”. As for Maurício Prates' intention (“to become cynical”), the author can assure that he did not achieve it.

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Continues in the next edition.