Montes Claros, 1922 – Brasilia (Brasil), 1997
By Carlos Eduardo Martins
Son of a primary school teacher, Darcy Ribeiro lost his father at the age of three and moved with his mother to his maternal grandparents’ home. In 1939, he enrolled in the School of Medicine in Belo Horizonte. He began his activism in the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), developed an interest in philosophy and literature, and, upon discovering his vocation for social sciences, abandoned medicine in 1943. With a scholarship provided by Donald Pierson, a professor at the Free School of Sociology and Politics in São Paulo, he enrolled in this institution. He graduated in ethnology in 1946 and was employed at the Indian Protection Service (SPI).
From 1946 to 1948, he participated in expeditions, coming into contact with the Terena, Ofaié-Xavante, Guarani, Caapores, and Kadiwéu indigenous groups. In 1950, he published his first book, Religião e Mitologia Kadiwéu, which earned him the Fabio Prado Prize, awarded by the São Paulo Literary Union. He took on the role of Director of Studies at the SPI, developing several initiatives in favor of the indigenous cause, among them the creation of the Museum of the Indian in 1953, which established the first Brazilian postgraduate course in anthropology, and the project for the creation of the Xingu Park. His writings about indigenous people were part of the struggle to restore the cultural strength and creativity that had been usurped from them, enabling them to redefine their relationship with society and the state that surrounded them.
In 1953, he taught Brazilian ethnology for two years at the Brazilian School of Public Administration (EBAP) and later joined the faculty of the National Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Brazil. Invited to collaborate on the educational directives of Juscelino Kubitschek’s government, he was appointed by Anísio Teixeira to direct the Social Studies Division of the Brazilian Center for Educational Research (CBPE), affiliated with the Ministry of Education, where he founded the journal Educação e Ciências Sociais. In 1959, he was appointed to organize the University of Brasília (UnB), in the Federal District, and in 1961, he became its first rector, a position he handed over to Anísio Teixeira to assume the Ministry of Education and Culture under João Goulart’s government in 1962. The following year, he served as Chief of Staff of the Presidency. The 1964 military coup stripped him of his political rights and removed him from his posts as a professor at the University of Brazil and ethnologist at the SPI. After a failed attempt to organize resistance, Darcy went into exile in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he taught at the University of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
World Civilizing Processes
During this period, he developed his studies on the anthropology of civilization, which elevated the scope of his work on indigenous issues and accompanied his entire intellectual journey. He wrote extensively on the topic, including O Processo Civilizatório (1968), As Américas e a Civilização (1969), Os Índios e a Civilização (1970), O Dilema da América Latina (1971), Os Brasileiros (1972), and later, O Povo Brasileiro (1996).
His thinking positioned itself against functionalism, dogmatic Marxism, and modernization theories, affirming a multilinear evolutionism. Darcy emphasized the cumulative nature of knowledge as the key to developing civilizing processes that promote ethnic transformations, create historical-social conglomerates, and tend toward the unification of humanity into a global social formation. From the agricultural to the pastoral revolutions, distinct civilizing processes occurred, but from the commercial and especially the industrial revolutions onward, they reached a global scope. These revolutions established contemporary social formations as part of the same civilizational process: capitalist-mercantile forms that became industrial-capitalist, and dependent formations that generated colonial and, through historical updates, neocolonial forms. For Darcy, the Industrial Revolution would be followed by the thermonuclear revolution, initiated in the 20th century and based on skilled and intellectual labor. This would require a global social formation to be developed by a world socialism, resulting from revolutions or evolutionary processes within democracies in central countries. However, he did not exclude the possibility of regressions, which could threaten humanity’s very survival.
In his anthropology of civilization, Darcy dedicated a special place to Brazil and the Brazilian people. The fusion of the three major ethnic groups (Black, White, and Indigenous) that characterizes Brazilian social formation could place it in a prominent role in creating a new global civilization founded on creativity, freedom, and solidarity, once freed from the shackles of dependence.
In 1968, he returned to Brazil after the Supreme Federal Court dismissed the cases against him. However, after the enactment of Institutional Act No. 5, he was imprisoned until September 1970. Acquitted by the Navy’s Audit Court, he settled in Venezuela, where he organized the Central University of the Republic project. At the invitation of Salvador Allende, he moved to Chile in 1971, working at the Institute of International Studies at the University of Chile (UC). Later, he collaborated with the government of Juan Velasco Alvarado, directing the integration program for Peruvian universities.
Return to Brazil
In 1974, permitted to return to Brazil, he underwent surgery for cancer treatment, removing one of his lungs. In 1976, he returned permanently to the country as part of the political relaxation promoted by the Geisel government. Elected a member of the Governing Council of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) in 1979, he received an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne, a title also granted by universities in Copenhagen, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Brasília.
In Brazil, he joined the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and, alongside Leonel Brizola, participated in the refounding of laborism under the Democratic Labor Party (PDT). Elected Vice-Governor of Rio de Janeiro in 1982 on a ticket headed by Brizola, he held the position of State Secretary of Science and Culture and coordinated the Special Education Program. His achievements included the creation of the Integrated Public Education Centers (CIEPs)—full-time educational units for low-income children, providing meals, medical assistance, and recreational and cultural activities—the foundation of the State Public Library, and the creation of the Sambadrome. He was elected Senator in 1990 for the state of Rio de Janeiro, though he took leave to assume the role of State Secretary of Special Education Projects in Brizola’s second term beginning in 1991. He oversaw the expansion of the CIEP program and the construction of the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro (UENF).
In 1992, he was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Admitted to the ICU at Samaritano Hospital in December 1994 for cancer treatment, he staged a “spectacular escape” from the hospital against medical advice. In February 1995, he resumed his Senate seat and dedicated himself to his final writings, among which O Povo Brasileiro (1996), the culmination of his studies on the anthropology of civilization, and Confissões (1997), a memoir and reflection on his life, stand out. Beyond his contributions to social sciences, he left a literary and poetic legacy manifested in books like Maíra (1976), O Mulo (1981), Utopia Selvagem (1986), O Migo (1988), Noções de Coisas (1995), and Eros e Tanatos (1998).
