​Francisco Clementino de San Tiago Dantas is considered one of the most important Brazilian intellectuals of the 20th century. Professor of law, jurist, writer, federal deputy, and Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs in the 60s, he left in the form of books, speeches, conferences, articles, and studies a legal and political work considered as a reference to this day more than 50 years after his death.

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His political thought has a rare lucidity and stood far ahead of his time. As chancellor, he strengthened “Independent Foreign Politics.” His style of thinking about Brazilian international politics still influences generations of diplomats.

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He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1911 to Admiral Raul de San Tiago Dantas and Violeta Mello de San Tiago Dantas. In his 53 years of life, he was a full professor of Civil Law at the University of Brazil (now the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), a professor of Roman Law at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Director of the National Faculty of Philosophy, and a Professor at the National Faculty of Architecture and at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Brazil.

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A lawyer, jurist, federal deputy for two successive terms for Minas Gerais, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the parliamentary government of Tancredo Neves (1961-62), Minister of Finance under João Goulart (1961-64), politician, journalist, owner and director of the Jornal do Commercio in Rio de Janeiro, and director of Banco Moreira Salles, he left an indelible mark on all his activities.

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He was an integralist militant from 1931 to 1937, having directed the newspaper A Razão for a year. He dedicated himself to academic life and law from 1937 onward.

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In 1955, back in politics, he joined the Brazilian Labor Party, being considered by scholars one of the great theoreticians of labor in the country, especially on unionism and nationalism (“O PTB e o Trabalhismo,” Benevides, Ed. Brasiliense, 1989).

In 1958, he was elected federal deputy for Minas Gerais. In August 1961, appointed by Janio Quadros as ambassador to the United Nations, he made a farewell speech in the Chamber of Deputies as he was going to take the post of ambassador to the United Nations in New York. However, he took no office due to the president’s resignation.

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A period of doubts and concerns followed that resignation, which was eventually resolved with the adoption of the parliamentary regime. João Goulart assumed the presidency, with Tancredo Neves as prime minister and San Tiago Dantas as minister of Foreign Affairs (September 1961 to July 1962). As foreign minister, he headed the Brazilian mission to the meeting in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, in which he defended the non-exclusion of Cuba from the group of American nations as advocated by the United States and the non-application of the intended sanctions against that country. He also traveled to Uruguay, the United States, Argentina, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, and the Vatican.

The “Independent Foreign Politics,” the pillars of which he helped to build, aimed at national interests, without the automatic alignments of the past. This site has several articles about this position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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In June 1962, his name was presented to Congress as a candidate for prime minister, but was rejected by a difference of more than 70 votes. The sessions of June 27 and 28 were marked by ideological extremism. On this occasion, Deputy Almino Afonso uttered the prophetic words: “Mr. President, this is the current challenge the Chamber has received. From its political maturity may indeed come days of a new perspective for our people but from its narrowness of political vision we may really mark tonight the beginning of the process of destruction of democratic institutions.”

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In April 1964, two years later, Almino Afonso’s prophecy was fulfilled and the democratic regime was overthrown by a coup d’état. Before that, in January 1963, with the return of Goulart’s presidential regime, San Tiago was invited to the Ministry of Finance, a position he held, already ill, for a short time. He died in the early hours of September 6, 1964, in Rio de Janeiro.

Deputy and former Minister of Justice Abi-Ackel then summarized the importance of San Tiago: “There are men […] who seem to always have their eyes turned to the future, expressing ideas and concepts the relevance of which is only fully perceived many years, sometimes decades, after they are enunciated. One such man was San Tiago Dantas.”

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Source (in Portuguese): https://santiagodantas.com.br/vida/quem-foi-san-tiago-dantas/.