20 years without Dante: from “Diretas Já!” to the transformation of Mato Grosso

His death, at the age of 54, continues to be surrounded by doubts that have never been fully clarified. At the time, I was mayor of Cuiabá and I even provoked the family about the possibility of creating a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) in the City Council to delve deeper into the facts related to his death. The family, legitimately, preferred not to go down that path. I respected this decision, but I confess that this is still a question that remains unanswered.

Dante was born into a traditional Mato Grosso family. He inherited his vocation for public life from Colonel Chico Pinto de Oliveira, his great-uncle and one of the greatest parliamentarians in the history of the Legislative Assembly of Mato Grosso. He graduated in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and, while still young, he became intensely involved in the national political debate.

Upon returning to Mato Grosso, he joined the MDB and faced his first electoral contest for councilor of Cuiabá, in 1976. He was defeated. Many would imagine that his political career would end there. Exactly the opposite occurred. The defeat strengthened his resolve. He took over the General Secretariat of the MDB, traveled through Mato Grosso, and got to know the reality of rural workers, squatters, sharecroppers and small farmers up close, an experience that shaped his worldview.

In 1978, he was elected state deputy. He delivered a firm, courageous and committed mandate to fundamental issues for Mato Grosso, especially in the search for solutions to agrarian conflicts. Shortly afterwards, he became a federal deputy and definitively wrote his name in the history of Brazil.

Even before taking office in Brasília, he began collecting signatures to present the proposal that would give the Brazilian people back the right to directly choose the president of the Republic. The Dante de Oliveira Amendment was born, which gave rise to the largest popular movement in Brazilian history until then: “Diretas Já!”.

Although the Dante de Oliveira Amendment was defeated in the Chamber of Deputies by just 22 votes, on April 25, 1984, that movement definitively changed the history of Brazil. Frustration gripped millions of Brazilians who had taken to the streets in the hope of regaining the right to directly choose the President of the Republic.

Dante didn't let it get him down. Alongside Tancredo Neves and the country's main democratic leaders, he participated in the political articulation that culminated in Tancredo's election on January 15, 1985, defeating Paulo Maluf and ending a two-decade cycle of military rule.

Although Tancredo died before taking office, leaving vice-president José Sarney to assume the Presidency of the Republic, that process consolidated the redemocratization of the country and paved the way for the reestablishment of direct elections for president, which materialized the ideal that Dante de Oliveira had taken to the streets of Brazil with the “Diretas Já!” movement.

After his decisive participation in the redemocratization of Brazil, Dante once again put his experience at the service of Mato Grosso. The people of Cuiaba elected him mayor of the capital. A few months later, he was called upon by President José Sarney to take over the Ministry of Agrarian Reform. He then returned to Cuiabá City Hall and was subsequently elected governor of Mato Grosso for two terms, leading the largest administrative reform ever carried out in the State.

I am convinced that no state administration has promoted reforms as profound as those carried out during your government. Dante assumed a broken state. When he took office, the payroll consumed 112% of monthly revenue. There were late salaries, strikes, a bloated state apparatus and a serious fiscal crisis. It took courage to make extremely difficult decisions.

Dante reduced the size of the State, extinguished public companies, promoted the liquidation of Bemat, led to the privatization of Cemat, closed the activities of Sanemat, Aeromat and Casemat and completely reorganized public finances. Many of these measures were harsh, but they were necessary to return investment capacity to the State.

At the end of his government, Mato Grosso already presented a completely different reality. Salaries were up to date, the subsidy system had been implemented, Bolivian gas would arrive in Cuiabá, the railway began to integrate our territory and Mato Grosso became a national reference in economic growth and investment attraction.

I also talk about Dante with the experience of those who had the privilege of working alongside him. I was municipal secretary of Urban Services during his administration at Cuiabá City Hall and, later, Secretary of State for Agriculture during his government. I experienced closely his way of managing, his ability to form teams and his courage to make decisions.

It was during this period that we implemented Pronaf in the first municipalities of Mato Grosso, strengthened family farming, developed programs that boosted cotton production and distributed agricultural equipment to all municipalities in the State. I am extremely proud to have participated in this moment in the history of Mato Grosso.

I will never forget the advice I received from Dante when I was elected mayor of Cuiabá. I was apprehensive about the responsibility I would take on and asked for his guidance. He responded to me with a phrase that I have carried throughout my public life: “Governing is knowing how to put together a team.” He explained that no manager dominates all matters and that the true leader is the one who brings together competent people for each area. This lesson stays with me to this day.

Dante also taught me another great virtue of public life: governing requires responsibility above personal convictions. Politically trained in a left-wing tradition, he understood that he governed a State inserted in a market economy and had the courage to carry out the reforms that society demanded at that historical moment. He did not govern thinking about pleasing political groups, but rather, he governed thinking about future generations of Mato Grosso residents.

That's why I say, with absolute conviction, that much of the Mato Grosso we have today was born from the decisions taken by Dante de Oliveira. Fiscal balance, growth capacity, investment attraction, administrative modernization, Fethab, the arrival of natural gas, the railway and many other achievements are directly linked to its vision of the future.

Twenty years after his departure, his story remains alive. As a public figure, as a democrat and as a manager, Dante left a legacy that spans generations. My gratitude will be eternal to the greatest political leader I had the honor of working with. Preserving its memory also means preserving part of the history of Brazilian democracy and the construction of modern Mato Grosso.

Wilson Santos is a History Professor and State Representative.