1592) Morte do embaixador Lincoln Gordon

Lincoln Gordon Dies at 96; Educator and Ambassador to Brazil
The New York Times, 21 December 2009

Lincoln Gordon, a diplomat, educator and political economist who was the American ambassador to Brazil in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the president of Johns Hopkins University in the late 1960s, died on Saturday at an assisted-living home near Washington. He was 96.

Dr. Gordon died at Collington Episcopal Life Care in Mitchellville, Md., where he had lived for the past two years, his son Robert said. He had been a Washington resident for many years and was still an active associate of the Brookings Institution there.

A scholarly, pipe-smoking economist who earned a doctorate at Oxford and was a Harvard professor for many years, Dr. Gordon was posted to Paris and London as an administrator of the Marshall Plan for European recovery after World War II. He served as the United States envoy to Brazil from 1961 to 1966 and was the president of Johns Hopkins from 1967 to 1971.

He was the author of books on government, the economy, energy and national security, foreign policy in Europe and Latin America, and Brazil's emergence from military dictatorships to partnership with the nations of North and South America. He also wrote many articles on North Atlantic Treaty Organization strategies, the integration of Europe and the Alliance for Progress in Latin America.

In a career split between academic appointments and government service, Dr. Gordon, a Democrat, taught business and international affairs at Harvard, served on the War Production Board during World War II and was later a consultant to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, a White House economics adviser and the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon, who never used his first name, was born on Sept. 10, 1913, in New York to Bernard and Dorothy Lerner Gordon. His father was a lawyer and his mother moderated youth forums broadcast by NBC and for The New York Times on WQXR. He attended Ethical Culture schools, graduated with high honors from Harvard in 1933 and earned his doctorate as a Rhodes scholar in 1936.

In 1937, he married the former Allison Wright. She died in 1987. Besides his son Robert, of New Haven, he is survived by two daughters, Sally Gordon of Los Angeles and Amy Gordon of Gill, Mass.; another son, Hugh, of Ardmore, Pa.; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

After the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, Dr. Gordon served on a task force that developed the Alliance for Progress, the program that provided aid intended to dissuade Latin America from revolution and socialism. Dr. Gordon took up the ambassadorship in Brazil in 1961 at a time of high inflation and just as a left-wing president, Joao Goulart, took office.

President Goulart was deposed in a right-wing military coup in 1964. Accusations that Dr. Gordon, his staff and the Central Intelligence Agency had been involved in the coup were repeatedly denied.

But in 1976, nearly a decade after stepping down as ambassador, Dr. Gordon acknowledged that the Johnson administration had been prepared to intervene militarily to prevent a leftist takeover of the government.

After returning from Brazil in 1967, Dr. Gordon, in addition to his State Department role, coordinated aid to Latin America through the Alliance for Progress. When he stepped down a year later to accept the Johns Hopkins presidency, President Lyndon B. Johnson praised his service as ''a rare combination of experience and scholarship, idealism and practical judgment.''

Dr. Gordon's four years at Johns Hopkins were dogged by deteriorating finances, faculty complaints over pay and academic priorities, and students rebellious over the ''relevance'' of their educations. He resigned in 1971.

From 1972 to 1975, Dr. Gordon was a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.

Later in the 1970s, he was associated with Resources for the Future, a research and policy organization in Washington, and since 1984 had been an economist with Brookings, which studies domestic and foreign policy issues.

His books include ''A New Deal for Latin America'' (1963), ''Growth Policies and the International Order'' (1979), ''Energy Strategies for Developing Nations'' (1981), ''Eroding Empire: Western Relations with Eastern Europe'' (1987) and ''Brazil's Second Chance'' (2001).

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Nota pessoal PRA:
Convivi com o Embaixador Lincoln Gordon durante todo o meu período em Washington, o "embaixador do golpe militar", como muitos o chamavam.
Independentemente dessa caracterização, que na verdade expressa apenas nossas próprias divisões políticas -- ainda não colmatadas, quase 50 anos após as crises políticas que desembocaram no movimento militar de 1964 --, eu o achava especialmente lúcido, ativo e muito simpático, sempre presente em todo e qualquer seminário que tratasse do Brasil.
Almoçamos muitas vezes juntos e aprendi a conhecê-lo.
Insisti muitas vezes para que ele terminasse suas memórias e ainda possuo em meu computador o esquema dessas memórias, quase seculares, como seria de se esperar. Ele me prometia terminar, mas acho que nunca o fez. Esperou demais.
Encaminhei-lhe mais de um pesquisador brasileiro, interessado nos eventos de 1961-64, quando sua vida profissional e a vida política do Brasil de então se cruzaram irremediavelmente. Muitos historiadores brasileiros o consideravam (e ainda o consideram) o principal "complotador" do golpe militar de 1964, o que é absolutamente ridículo. Não cabe negar que os EUA se interessavam ativamente pela política brasileira, e certamente não permitiriam, com sua habitual arrogância imperial, que aqui surgisse não uma nova Cuba, mas uma nova China comunista (pelas dimensões e importância do Brasil).
Gordon, que era um reformista sincero, um progressista do New Deal, quase um tecnocrata estatizante (como foi em grande medida toda aquela geração intervencionista, passavelmente keynesiana, e crente nas virtudes das políticas públicas para corrigir "erros de mercado"), ficou conhecido, assim, como um "embaixador do golpe", quando o golpe foi dado pelos militares brasileiros, sob o olhar vigilante do grande irmão americano. Era natural, nas circunstâncias da época.

Quando ele terminou seu livro "Brazil's Second Chance", eu lhe disse, sinceramemte, que achava o livro incompleto, que ele precisava tratar de sua participação, dos EUA queria dizer, no golpe de 1964 com maior grau de detalhe.
Ele então voltou à pesquisa, recolheu mais documentos confidenciais liberados pelo DOS e CIA na Biblioteca Benson da Universidade do Texas, tratando especificamente do envolvimento americano com o golpe, e publicou uma separata, um capítulo complementar ao seu livro editado.
Esse capítulo suplementar fez parte integral do livro em sua edição barsileira, que eu fiz traduzir e editar pela Senac.
Na introdução eu comparava Mr. Gordon ao personagem Mister Slang, de um dos livros de Monteiro Lobato. A capa da edição brasileira pode ser vista em meu site, neste link: http://www.pralmeida.org/01Livros/2FramesBooks/55GordonBook.html
Quem quiser ler a introdução basta me pedir que eu mando.

Eu teria gostado muito de ter lido as memórias de Mister Gordon. Infelizmente, creio que isso não será possível, mas ele deve ter deixado muitos papéis, que provavelmente serão encaminhados aos National Archives, e lá ficarão à disposição dos pesquisadores.

Good bye, Mister Gordon, vou escrever um pequeno texto em sua homenagem: um americano honesto, honrado, grande scholar, que defendeu os interesses de seu país e soube ser simpático à causa reformista e progressista no Brasil, infelizmente envolvido no turbilhão de nossas crises políticas e incompreendido como verdadeiro amigo do Brasil. A história lhe fará justiça...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 21.12.2009