Affonso Arinos de Mello Franco

Affonso Arinos de Mello Franco (11 November 1930 – 15 March 2020), also known as Afonso Arinos Filho, was a Brazilian diplomat, politician, journalist, professor, and writer. His diplomatic career ran from 1952 to 1994. He entered the service as a third-class consul and became minister of first class in 1979. He was Brazil's ambassador to Bolivia, Venezuela, the Holy See, and the Netherlands. During his final posting in The Hague, he was Brazil's representative on the Administrative Council of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Arinos was elected in 1960 to the constituent assembly of the newly created state of Guanabara. He represented Guanabara in the federal Chamber of Deputies from 1964 to 1966. As a federal deputy, he opposed United States pressure for Brazil to take part in the Vietnam War. In 1966, he joined the MDB, the opposition party permitted under the military government.

Similar names recurred in the family, so Brazilian publications often called him Afonso Arinos Filho or Afonso Arinos, filho. Four months after he arrived in La Paz, General Luis García Meza overthrew interim president Lidia Gueiler Tejada on 17 July 1980. Arinos sent Itamaraty reports on the new regime's diplomatic isolation and United States pressure over cocaine trafficking. He remained in La Paz as one military government replaced another after the coup.

After the coup, the Brazilian embassy sheltered Teresa Ormachea de Siles and María Isabel Siles Ormachea, the wife and daughter of Hernán Siles Zuazo, who had received the most votes in the June presidential election. Their arrival was kept secret before requests for safe-conduct were made public.

Arinos moved to Caracas as ambassador to Venezuela in 1983 and remained there until 1985. In 1983, he chaired the third extraordinary meeting of the Latin American Council of the Latin American Economic System. He led Brazil's delegation to the Latin American Regional Conference for Action against apartheid in Caracas.

From 1986 to 1990, Arinos was Brazil's ambassador to the Holy See. He presented his credentials to Pope John Paul II on 3 March 1986. Brazil accredited him separately to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta for the same term. He sat on the Administrative Council of the Permanent Court of Arbitration as Brazil's delegate. In 1992, he headed Brazil's delegation to the special commission on intercountry adoption at the Hague Conference on Private International Law. He returned as head of the delegation for its seventeenth session in 1993, which adopted the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.

Political career

When Brazil's capital moved to Brasília in 1960, the former Federal District became the state of Guanabara. Arinos ran for one of the 30 seats in the new Constituent and Legislative Assembly on the ticket of the National Democratic Union, or UDN. He was elected on 3 October 1960 with 14,661 votes. The assembly drafted Guanabara's first constitution, which Arinos signed on 27 March 1961. He sat on the Committee on Constitution and Justice in 1961 and chaired the Committee on Education in 1962.

After Jânio Quadros resigned in August 1961, Arinos left the UDN for the Christian Democratic Party, or PDC. He objected to the attempt by UDN members to prevent Vice President João Goulart from taking office. He chose the PDC for its support of constitutional government and social reform under Catholic social teaching.

On 6 October 1964, Arinos entered the federal Chamber of Deputies as a PDC substitute for Guanabara. He held the seat until 6 December 1966. He was a full member of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 1965 and 1966.

The military government abolished the existing parties in 1965. Arinos joined the Brazilian Democratic Movement, or MDB, when it was organized in 1966 as the legal opposition to the government. After his term ended, he resumed diplomatic work as Brazil's consul in Geneva.

Journalism and teaching

Arinos began writing for Manchete while working at the Foreign Ministry. In 1955, editor Otto Lara Resende asked him to take charge of the magazine's international section. His diplomatic position restricted what he could publish about foreign policy, so he signed his articles "Gil Cassio", a pen name previously used by his great-grand-uncle Afonso Arinos. One article criticized the military government in Peru and drew a reply from the Peruvian ambassador. Arinos remained at Manchete until leaving for his first overseas diplomatic post in 1956.

At the Brazilian embassy in Rome, Arinos worked as second secretary from 1956 to 1959. He reported from the city for Jornal do Brasil in 1957 and 1958. After returning to Brazil, he wrote for Tribuna da Imprensa in 1960 and 1961, when he was entering elected politics in Guanabara. He wrote or gave interviews for A Época, O Metropolitano, A Noite, Correio Braziliense, Revista Nacional, and Revista Civilização Brasileira.

Arinos returned to magazine and television work in 1976, writing for Fatos e Fotos / Gente and working for TV Educativa. He worked on the Enciclopédia do Brasil Ilustrada in 1977. From 1995 until the closure of TV Manchete in 1999, he was the network's commentator on international politics. He wrote for Jornal do Commercio in 2002 and 2003.

Pompeu de Sousa invited Arinos in October 1964 to teach Contemporary Civilization in the Department of Journalism at the Central Institute of Letters of the University of Brasília. The journalism course had opened in 1962 within the university's core course in letters. Pompeu was developing it into a Faculty of Mass Communication when the military government began intervening in the university. Arinos taught while serving as federal deputy for Guanabara. Arinos resigned his chair. In his letter to Carvalho, he called the intellectual climate at UnB "McCarthyism" and objected that conformity to political power had become the chief qualification for advancement. In all, 223 professors and assistants left UnB in protest, nearly 80 percent of its teaching staff.

Writings

Arinos returned to memoir across four decades. His first book, Primo Canto: Memórias da mocidade, was published by Civilização Brasileira in 1976 and recounts his childhood and youth. It was followed by Três Faces da Liberdade in 1988 and Atrás do Espelho: Cartas de Meus Pais in 1994, which used letters sent to him by his parents. In his 1999 welcoming address, Sarney grouped these books with Arinos's diplomatic diary as memoirs in which personal recollection gave way to political and literary commentary.

Arinos used another diary for Mirante, published by Topbooks in 2006. The journal begins in 1998 and ends in 2005. It covers his family, friendships, early work at the Itamaraty, and his embassies in La Paz, the Vatican, and The Hague. It also recounts encounters with political and literary figures, including Carlos Lacerda and João Cabral de Melo Neto.

In Tramonto, published by Objetiva in 2013, Arinos wrote about more than fifty-five years with his wife, Beatriz, and the death of their young son Virgílio in 1962. The book also recounts meetings with Pope John Paul II, Drummond, Jânio Quadros, Assis Chateaubriand, João Guimarães Rosa, and Candido Portinari. Arinos also wrote short biographical essays. Perfis em Alto-relevo, published in 2002, gathered texts on politicians, writers, jurists, and journalists whom he had known or studied. His lectures on Drummond, José Lins do Rego, Pedro Nava, Antônio Houaiss, and other writers were printed by the academy in Palestras na Academia in 2014.

A large part of his editorial work concerned his father's papers. For Afonso Arinos no Congresso: Cem discursos parlamentares, issued by the Federal Senate in 1999, he selected and introduced one hundred speeches from his father's years in Congress. He had begun the selection after receiving a request from his father in 1956 and finished it for the Senate edition. He returned to his father's foreign policy in Diplomacia Independente: Um Legado de Afonso Arinos, published in 2002. He prepared unpublished essays by his father for O Espírito e a Ação in 2005 and organized Rosa de Ouro, issued by Editora UFMG in 2007. In his induction speech, Arinos said that he had come to writing through diplomacy and politics, which had led him to set down experiences in books, newspapers, and magazines. He discussed the patron of Chair 17, Hipólito da Costa, and its previous occupants, ending with Houaiss, his friend of forty-five years.

Arinos gave lectures at the academy and welcomed two new members. In 2002, he spoke about the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade in a lecture cycle held for the centenary of Drummond's birth. He delivered the welcoming address when historian José Murilo de Carvalho took Chair 5 on 10 September 2004. On 5 April 2010, he welcomed literary scholar Cleonice Berardinelli to Chair 8. Berardinelli had taught him during secondary school, and he recalled that her classes had deepened his pleasure in reading and writing Portuguese.

In May 2012, Arinos coordinated the academy's lecture cycle Eleições e reflexões. Its four talks dealt with voting and citizenship, political representation, coalition government, and the rights and responsibilities of the press. The lectures were transmitted by TV Justiça.

After his death, Fernanda Montenegro was elected to Chair 17 on 4 November 2021 and took office on 25 March 2022. Montenegro recalled in her induction speech that Arinos had repeatedly urged her to write a book and seek election to the academy. She said that his words led her to stand for his vacant chair.

Death

Arinos died of a heart attack in Rio de Janeiro on 15 March 2020. He was 89.

Honors and affiliations

Brazil awarded Arinos the Order of Rio Branco at the rank of Grand Officer in 1979 and Grand Cross in 1985. During his embassy in Bolivia, Potosí named him an honored guest of the Imperial City and Cochabamba named him a distinguished guest in 1981. Bolivia awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Condor of the Andes in 1982. He received Venezuela's Order of Francisco de Miranda, First Class, in 1985.

Arinos received the Grand Cross of the Order of Pope Pius IX in 1988, while serving as ambassador to the Holy See. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta awarded him the Grand Cross of its Order of Merit in 1989. At the end of his embassy in the Netherlands, he received the Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1994.

The state of Rio de Janeiro granted him honorary citizenship in 1990. The Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro awarded him the Pedro Ernesto Medal in 1999. In 2002, he became a Grand Officer of the Order of Naval Merit and received the Medalha Mérito della Dante di Nova Friburgo from the local Dante Alighieri Society. He received a medal for fifty years of civil service in 2006, the Grand Medal of the Inconfidência and a diploma of cultural merit in 2007, and the gold grade of the Santos-Dumont Merit Medal in 2009. Arinos joined the Brazilian Bar Association in 1976 and PEN Clube do Brasil in 1993. At the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, he became a corresponding member in 1971, a full member in 1996, an emeritus member in 2007, and third vice-president in 2010. He was elected to the Academia Brasileira de Letras in 1999.

His foreign affiliations comprised the National Academy of History of Argentina, the Royal Academy of History in Spain, and the Historical and Geographical Institute of Uruguay. He belonged to the Sociedade Brasileira de Direito Internacional and the Academia Nacional de Agricultura. He held posts at organizations devoted to art, museums, music, and relations between Brazil and other Latin American countries.

Selected works

Primo Canto: Memórias da mocidade, 1976. Três Faces da Liberdade, 1988. Atrás do Espelho: Cartas de Meus Pais, 1994. Introdução a Brasil Holandês / Dutch Brazil, 1995. Tempestade no Altiplano: Diário de um Embaixador, 1998. Ribeiro Couto e Afonso Arinos / Adeuses, 1999. Afonso Arinos no Congresso: Cem Discursos Parlamentares, organizer and introduction, 1999. Diplomacia Independente: um legado de Afonso Arinos, 2002. Perfis em Alto-relevo, 2002. Mirante, 2006. Tramonto, 2013.