Theotônio dos Santos Júnior (1936–2018)

• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18770669
• Author: Ronald H. Chilcote
• Date: 01 May 2018
• Subject Matter: In Memoriam

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 220, Vol. 45 No. 3, May 2018, 294

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18770669

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

294

In Memoriam

Theotônio dos Santos Júnior

(1936–2018)

We celebrate the life and accomplishments of Theotônio dos Santos Júnior, a

founding participating editor of Latin American Perspectives. Born in Carangola,

Minas Gerais, Brazil, and the author of more than three dozen books and col-

laborator in scores of others along with more than 150 academic articles,

Theotônio was trained as a political scientist in the federal universities in Minas

and in Brasília. As a young professor at the Universidade de Brasília, he was

among those expelled after the military coup of 1964, when on assignment for

The Nation I first met him in July hiding from the police and the military in Rio

de Janeiro. Our all-night conversation revealed not only his deep insight into

the coup and its implications but a new understanding of underdevelopment

in Brazil. In 1966 he fled to exile in Chile, where he elaborated his understand-

ing of backwardness and dependency and challenged orthodox economic the-

ories about development in a seminal article in American Economic Review (May

1970). We met again in 1972, this time in Santiago, where he, Vânia Bambirra,

Ruy Mauro Marini, and others had associated with the Centro de Estudios

Socioeconómicos and initiated a research program on Latin American depen-

dency. The September 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende necessitated a sec-

ond exile in 1974 to Mexico and a professorship at the Universidad Nacional

Autónoma de México. At that time Theotônio published a lengthy chapter on

Brazil in the popular volume edited by Ronald Chilcote and Joel Edelstein,

Latin America: The Struggle with Dependency and Beyond (1974).

An amnesty in 1980 permitted him a return to Belo Horizonte and an unsuc-

cessful run for the Minas de Gerais governorship in 1982, when we met once

again and began a long friendship and collaboration over my many years of

teaching and researching in Brazil. In 1988 he moved to Rio de Janeiro and

joined the economics faculty at the Universidade Federal Fluminense.

We shall miss Theotônio. Our memories of his scholarly contributions, his

intellectual curiosity, and his friendly outreach to others will inspire present

and future scholars in their research and teaching.

—Ronald H. Chilcote

770669LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18770669Latin American PerspectivesChilcote / In Memoriam: Theotônio dos Santos Júnior

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