Rosa Maria Vieira e o sonho de Furtado: reforma, política e ideologia

Abstract

In the centenary of Furtado's birth, it is surprising to think that his theoretical work remains extremely current to understand the setback situation that Brazil is currently experiencing. Perhaps he himself thought that his analysis of underdevelopment was centered on a certain time, a theory dated to a specific moment in the history of the 1950s-60s, and which today would have been overcome by development. Perhaps he himself did not wish to be so up-to-date, that the problems and issues he debated and struggled to resolve in the mid-twentieth century were still present in the early third decade of the twenty-first century, and that the same backward elites who dominated at the time still had as much power as in a “Lampedusa” syndrome, changing to remain the same. When Furtado could imagine that Brazil could de-industrialize so much and retreat to the status of primary exporter of soy and iron ore, products with less dynamic effect on economic activity than was coffee more than 100 years ago. It would also be perhaps a great surprise to see that our main market is China, a country that emerged from underdevelopment through the industrialization process, advancing, through import substitution, in the technological control of key sectors, a country that emerges as a global power. It is the relevance of Furtado that makes Rosa Maria Vieira's book important, not only for those who wish to understand Furtado's thinking, but to understand the genesis of the structure of the current backwardness.