Raymundo Faoro

Raymundo Faoro was a lawyer and president of the Brazilian BAR Association, which in Portuguese is known as OAB (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil). Even though lawyers have an expressive presence in the political scenery of Brazil, not one President after Faoro gained the same intellectual respect as he did.

Faoro was author of a few books. The most important of all his books was "Os Donos do Poder" (The Owners of Power). In this book, Faoro describes the History of Power in Brazilian History, since the pre-colonial times until approximately the end of the Getúlio Vargas first period.

In this book, Faoro gave special attention to the "estamento", the class which, although changing periodically according to political and economic phases, ruled Brazil ("estamento" could be defined as the Brazilian counterpart of Soviet "nomenklatura"). According to Faoro, the estamento (which were the people associated with the navigators back in the 1500s, the slave owners sugar-cane farmers in the 1700s, the coffee farmers in the 1800s, for example) always attempted to use the power and wealthiness of the State in self benefit, so preventing the masses from actually ruling the country in benefit of the majority.

Faoro's book became one of the references to understand the formation of Brazilian society. Other books which gained such recognition were Sergio Buarque de Holanda's Raizes do Brasil, Gilberto Freyre's Casa Grande e Senzala and Caio Prado Junior's Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo.