Dead 40 years ago, the miner led articulations so necessary for the country and held positions of such relevance in the second half of the 20th century that became one of the most notable public men of that period.
He was Minister of Justice of the Government between 1953 and 1954. He served as Prime Minister in the early 1960s in the only parliamentary experience of the Republic in Brazil. He reacted with indignation and, in the following years, was one of the most vehements of the opposition.
He left the governor’s chair of Minas Gerais in August 1984 to dedicate himself to the campaign for President of the Republic. The election would take place indirectly at the Electoral College, but Tancredo ran the country in rallies like a direct election.
On January 15, 1985, he defeated with three hundred votes of difference, leading the transition from dictatorship to democracy and inaugurating a new period of the country’s history, the new republic.
On the eve of the inauguration, however, it was hospitalized with severe abdominal pain. without reaching the Planalto Palace. His deputy assumed the position.
After four decades of his death, a question can help us understand who Tancredo was and what is Brazil of 2025. A politician with his profile, known for temperance and conciliation capacity, would do well in disputes for today’s power?
No, believes journalist Plínio Fraga, author of (Ed. Objective, 2017). “The way politics is made today would make the [sucesso do] Tancredo. “
Fraga associates the Minas Gerais leader with Tertius Gaudens, a conception of the German sociologist that a third part benefits from the clash between the other two. “A redivivative Tancredo would seek the middle path, trying to talk to the left and right, with Catholics and evangelicals. But the way politics is currently done is no longer so.”
For the biographer, moderate style has been less and less attractive to voters. “What engages is radicality, which has more repercussion and forces you to be linked more clearly to a character, regardless of the facts.”
According to him, a Cartesian scenario, in which a candidate seeks to show voters that he has the best proposal to solve a problem, enumerating arguments based on a reality of factual bases, is increasingly distant. “Politics today is emotional and emotional,” says Fraga. “Tancredo would be an old solution to a policy that has changed.”
Tancredo’s friend, from whom he was secretary of planning in the government of Minas, partially agrees with Fraga. “Tancredo’s chances today would be remote,” he says. “His style does not match the high values in Brazil today.”
But Costa Couto ponders. “With its genius and pragmatism, perhaps Tancredo could create a competitive electoral lode,” says the author of “Tancredo Vivo – Case and Chance” (Ed. Record, 1995), a book that resembles episodes of the life of the miner, the debut in politics during the Old Republic to death that grown to the death
Before being hospitalized, Tancredo had chosen all his ministers, and Costa Couto took over the interior folder. In addition to this position, he was appointed by interim governor of the Federal District. In this function, it was up to him to receive Tancredo’s body in Brasilia on April 22, the day after death.
“It was one of the worst experiences of my life,” he recalls.
From Brasilia, the body went to and from there to São João del Rei, hometown of Tancredo, where it was buried on April 24.
A succession of motives led to Tancredo’s death, according to Plínio Fraga. “He was a 75 -year -old who took a long time to seek care after he started to feel pain,” he says. “He will postpone the tests for strategic and political reasons. He thought he could get water in the transition with any marola.”
Hospitalized on March 14, with a benign tumor in the intestine, Tancredo underwent surgeries: two in Brasilia and five in São Paulo. “When he sought care, there was a series of misconceptions. An analysis of the medical reports pointed out weaknesses. And there was still the vanity dispute between doctors, both in Brasilia and São Paulo,” says the biographer.
All who lived with Tancredo remember the light humor, who resisted the disease.
Costa Couto remembers the last occasion when he was with Tancredo, two days before hospitalization. By then the youngest friend had already been informed that he would assume the Ministry of the Interior.
“He played with me, even with fever,” says Costa Couto. “I asked, ‘Doctor Tancredo, would you consider the hypothesis of transferring Funai to another ministry?’ He replied, ‘Ronaldo, you are way, it is better to be with yourself.
