The story of engineer Clelio Campolina Diniz, 83, is marked by outcomes that defy all probabilities. One of 11 siblings raised on a smallholding in the rural zone of Esmeraldas, 56 kilometers (km) from Minas Gerais state capital Belo Horizonte, he was the only one to make it to university. In 1964, Campolina managed to enroll on an evening course at a private college in Belo Horizonte after being failed after his final interview in the selection process for the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)—almost 50 years later he would be appointed as its dean.
His typing skills, honed while working at an accounting firm during his teens, were decisive in his appointment as a clerk during a selection process for the Minas Gerais Development Bank (BDMG), a job he would leave a decade later to embark upon an academic career at UFMG’s Center for Development and Regional Planning (CEDEPLAR).
Campolina did his master’s and doctorate at UNICAMP, with an 18-month sandwich placement at the University of Oxford in the UK, and also had stints at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Rutgers University in the US, and Italy’s University of Rome.
Regional economics, economic development, and technology & innovation economics
Institution
Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)
Educational background
Graduated in operations engineering and mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (IPUC-MG), specialization in development & planning at the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES) in Chile, master’s and doctorate in economics at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP)
An expert in regional economics, economic development, and technology & innovation economics, Clelio Campolina has authored over 200 scientific articles. He studied the challenges of industrialization in Minas Gerais and the dispersal of industrial activity across Brazil in recent decades, defending a regional development model that brings the city and the territory together. After retiring from UFMG in 2014, Campolina spent ten months as Brazilian Minister for Science, Technology, and Innovation under the Dilma Rousseff government. In May of this year he welcomed Pesquisa FAPESP to his Belo Horizonte apartment and gave the following interview.
You come from a poor family in a rural area. What obstacles did you face to get your education?
My grandfather had a small farm, which he divided among 10 children. My father inherited a small piece of this land, and we lived off subsistence farming. I’m the youngest of 11 siblings. At the time, children only went to school after they turned seven, but I was a really frail boy, and you had to walk about 3.5 km to get to the rural school, so my family postponed it for a year. I started school after I had turned 8, and the rural school only ran until the third year of primary [currently elementary education]. My paternal grandparents moved to the town of Esmeraldas, and then my grandfather died. My grandmother invited a cousin and me to live with her, and I enrolled in the fourth year of primary school in 1956, aged almost 14. After this, my older brother enrolled me on a recently opened junior high school course offered in the town by the new priest. This program had excellent teachers, and most of the students went on to do higher education. While I was studying there in the evenings, I worked by day in a bar, then at an accounting firm, and then at a small company. I finished junior high, and as I was good at typing I came to Belo Horizonte looking for work, because I wanted to carry on studying.
And what did you find here?
My father wrote a letter to a cousin of his who worked at a branch of a big commercial firm, asking if he could give me a job; they were looking for someone, so I took a test and passed. I worked eight-hour weekdays, and Saturday mornings until midday, and started the scientific course [current high school] in the evenings, while living in lodgings. On my minimum salary, I paid for the accommodation, which included bed and board, and the monthly school fees. I started looking for a job that would require me to work six hours a day so I’d have more time to study. I went to the former Banco Mineiro da Produção (Minas Gerais Production Bank, later merged with other financial institutions) to ask if they had any openings. They told me: “Not here, but there’s a selection process open on the 22nd floor.” It was at the Minas Gerais Development Bank (BDMG), which was being set up by the state government. There were 10 vacancies for more than 700 candidates. I took fourth place in the final classification and occasionally went to the offices to find out when I’d be called; they kept telling me to wait. The first two placeholders, very politicized students from the UFMG economics course, told me the hirings were politically influenced. I went to file a grievance with a board member at the bank, and then they called me to post.
What did you do at the bank?
I started at the Administration Department, but the Department for Studies & Planning was created soon after, and I went there as a typist. This unit was run by Fernando Reis [1932–1983], a professor at UFMG. The team was soon expanded with other professors from the School of Economic Sciences and School of Engineering at the University. I really threw myself into this work—I did everything, and I caught the attention of Fernando Reis from the bank’s management team. I finished the scientific course in 1963, when I was 21, and sat the entrance exam for engineering at UFMG. I passed the written tests but was eliminated after my interview. I then sat the entrance exam for the Polytechnic Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (IPUC-MG) which had been set up by professor Mário Werneck, former principal of the UFMG School of Engineering. I passed and did evening classes on the operations engineering course.
There was little industry in Minas Gerais directed by local businesspeople: it was either State-owned, or from foreign capital
Why did you choose engineering?
Because in the rural area I came from, only three professions were recognized: lawyer, doctor, and engineer. I wasn’t into law. When I was a teenager, my father encouraged me to watch the jury trials in town, telling me they were very instructive. That gave me a personal prejudice against lawyers; I thought they defended the guilty and convicted the innocent. I couldn’t study medicine, because the course was full-time and I needed to work. So engineering was chosen by a process of elimination. My course was three years long, and there was controversy: would it really count as an engineering course with this shorter duration? IPUC sought recourse with the Justice system, and got it recognized. When I got my diploma in 1967, the bank opened a selection process for an engineering position. I took first place and became the bank’s engineer, initially restructuring sugar fabrication plants and working on energy and industrial planning, on a project involving all the team from the department known as Diagnosis of the Minas Economy.
In 1971 you attended a course on planning and development in Chile, which gave your career a new track. How did that opportunity come about?
After the Diagnosis, the bank signed an agreement with the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES), a permanent body within the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), to set up a planning system in the state. UN industry specialists came, and I worked with one of them, the Uruguayan engineer Tulio Balso, a man with great knowledge of industry. Qualified in operations engineering, I nonetheless continued with the full engineering course at IPUC, and two-and-a-half years later I graduated in mechanical engineering. The ILPES team was coordinated by Carlos Matus [1931–1988], who later became a minister under Chilean president Salvador Allende. I applied to do the three-month planning course offered by ECLAC in Brazil, and Matus said to me: “Campolina, don’t leave now, we need you, but I promise when a long course opens in Chile, I’ll invite you.”
How was your time in Chile?
I was interviewed in Rio de Janeiro by ILPES professor Antônio Barros de Castro [1938–2011] to see if I was up to the course, then I spent ten months in Santiago. Some of the ILPES team that had been in Minas Gerais had gone to work for the Allende government, but the Brazilians remained, such as Maria da Conceição Tavares [1930–2024], Antônio Barros de Castro, and Antonio Baltar [1915–2003]. The famous [Argentine economist] Raúl Prebisch [1901–1986], mentor and first director of ECLAC, came from New York and delivered an exceptional 60-hour course based on his recently released book Transformación y desarrollo: La gran tarea de América Latina (Change and development: Latin America’s great task). Chile was effervescent in 1971—it was a very radical group, and I thought that they would bring about a revolution; I’ve always been a reformist.
Why did you interrupt your career at the bank when you decided to do your master’s at UNICAMP?
I came back from Chile and was appointed as head economic advisor to the bank. When Allende was deposed, Castro encouraged me to do the master’s in economics they were setting up at UNICAMP. I was not qualified as an economist, and needed to pass the selection for the Brazilian National Association for Graduate Programs in Economics (ANPEC). As I was at home in a body cast after a serious car accident, I had plenty of time to prepare, and I passed, then applied for a release to do the master’s. The only thing was that the bank’s president, although very pleasant personally, was one of the most reactionary figures I’ve ever met. He thought about it, and then told me: “That economics course at UNICAMP is a bunch of communists. I’ll only release you if you go and do a course at the IMF [International Monetary Fund].” I refused, took two accumulated vacation periods and requested nonremunerated leave to deal with private matters. I lived for a year and a half in Campinas on the master’s scholarship grant.
Maria da Conceição Tavares swore during her classes. She was an excellent professor, thought-provoking to the limit
What did you look at during your master’s research?
The thesis gave rise to the book Estado e capital estrangeiro na industrialização mineira (State and foreign capital in the industrialization of Minas Gerais), for which I won the Diogo de Vasconcelos Prize from the Minas Gerais Culture Office. It was adopted in disciplines on the Minas Gerais economy, and used by planning bodies. I studied the industrialization process in Minas Gerais, and one conclusion I drew was that not much industry was run by local entrepreneurs: it was the State, or with foreign capital. Generally speaking, the Brazilian business world is relatively weak, particularly in the less developed regions. It’s stronger in São Paulo and states in the Brazilian South, mainly Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.
What happened when you returned from UNICAMP?
I came back with my credits and had to draft my dissertation. There was a new president at the bank. I received an invitation from UFMG to teach on the graduate program at CEDEPLAR. I requested the bank’s authorization to take on the two functions, explaining: I’ll be there two mornings per week, I’ll give early classes and then come to the bank. The president said he was not interested, that teaching classes would get in the way. I tried to convince him, but he wouldn’t have it. He said to me: “We have two alternatives: either I promise you the next Head of Department post that comes up, or you hand me a letter of resignation.” I handed in my resignation and left to earn a third of what I had been earning—the bank paid really well at that time. In my six years as an engineer, I carried on living in student halls of residence, and helped my parents and siblings. I left the bank the year I got married. I always joke that my wife dated a guy with money, then married the broke version.
How was the transition to a research career?
I was hired as a replacement professor in 1976, and only joined the permanent faculty in 1978. They gave me a few courses to teach: one in economic theory for the master’s program, and another—an introduction to economics—for two classes at the school of engineering. Then came a course in international economics and another in the economics of science and technology. I was newly married and was lesson-planning on Saturday nights. In 1982, the university released me to go once again to Campinas and do my PhD. I got the credits and then went to Oxford to do a sandwich doctorate.
How was UNICAMP during the two periods that you were there?
I went there in 1974, a year after UNICAMP put together the first economics degree class. Maria da Conceição Tavares and Carlos Lessa [1936–2020] lived in Rio, but they went to Campinas almost every week. João Manuel Cardoso de Mello and Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo helped to structure the UNICAMP undergraduate course. Antônio Barros de Castro, Wilson Cano [1937–2020] and Ferdinando de Oliveira Figueiredo [1920–2014] lived in Campinas. The famous professor Fernando Novais gave classes in the history of economics. It was an exceptional team. Others came later: Luciano Coutinho, José Carlos Braga, Carlos Alonso. Maria de Conceição gave classes using the most horrible swear words you can think of. She was an excellent professor, enthusiastic and thought-provoking to the limit. She put us to work and to thinking all the time. I recall giving a seminar during the master’s, on Conceição’s course. I went in through one door and Conceição entered through another. She called out: “Campolina, have you read such-and-such an author?” I answered in the negative. She replied: “Then the seminar won’t be any good, you’d better cancel.” And in my primitive ignorance, I quickly retorted: “Listen first so you can form an opinion after.” I was tense for the seminar, but I had prepared well. When I finished, she came over, gave me a hug and a kiss on the forehead and said: “What a wonderful student.” She was provocative to the limit. When I went back to do my PhD at UNICAMP in 1982, a lot of people had left to work for the São Paulo State Government after the election of Franco Montoro.
I left the bank the year I got married. I always joke that my wife dated a guy with money, then married the broke version
Your doctorate compared the dynamics of agricultural and mineral production with regional development in Brazil. What were the key conclusions?
I observed, for example, that there was a deconcentration of the agricultural sector and mineral activity, and that had a knock-on effect on other economic activities, such as industry. During the first half of 1983 I went to Oxford and structured my thesis. When I got back in mid-1984, I turned the thesis in to my advisor Wilson Cano. He wanted me to change the conclusion. I said no, and we arrived at an impasse. Cano was an excellent advisor, but did not agree with the idea that São Paulo State would lose its relative participation in industry, as the thesis proposed. I had conducted a study and observed that investment decisions were already moving away from São Paulo. Mário Possas, who directed the Economics Institute at UNICAMP, invited us to lunch, but I was unyielding. Then Mário said: “Wilson, it’s his thesis, he wants to defend it.” Cano replied: “You can defend it, but on your head be it.” it was an uneasy defense, starting at 2 p.m. and finishing at 7:30 p.m. I very enthusiastically defended my opinions. At the end, the bench gave me five maximum “10” scores and we went for a barbecue at Wilson Cano’s house. In the material I presented during the selection process for full professor at UFMG in 1991, I reaffirmed these points. I spent part of my postdoctoral period in the United States, analyzing the issue of deindustrialization of the country’s northeast, technological changes, and expansion of Silicon Valley. There lie the primary causes of São Paulo’s relative loss of participation, that I went on to publish in two articles about productive restructuring and the regional impact of Brazilian industry, and polygonal development in Brazil.
Could you define polygonal development?
This work gained emphasis because I shifted a benchmark to see where industry was headed. Instead of using the federative units (states) as a reference, I began working with geographical micro regions as defined by the IBGE [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics]. I separated the São Paulo Metropolitan Region from the rest of the state of São Paulo and the country. Polygonal development demonstrated that the São Paulo region was losing relative participation, but the deconcentration of industry was being contained within a region-sized polygon whose vertices were Belo Horizonte, Uberlândia, Londrina, Caxias do Sul, Florianópolis, and back to Belo Horizonte. Rio de Janeiro was outside this polygon. That study was published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and has been cited almost a thousand times. Another piece I wrote was “Productive restructuring and regional impact on Brazilian industry,” which I produced with my assistant at that time, Marco Crocco; it pretty much confirms these trends. Later on, I did some work for the IPEA [Institute for Applied Economic Research], published in 2005, through which I showed that the polygon was widening somewhat as an effect of the agricultural frontier expanding. Goiás State has grown considerably, with some industries migrating to the Brazilian Midwest, but the vast majority still falls within the polygon, including the hinterland of São Paulo State.
I’d like to turn to your career at CEDEPLAR, where you helped to restructure the regional economics course. What was your contribution?
CEDEPLAR was created in 1967 under the leadership of Fernando Reis and other professors looking to escape the influence of the full professors, and in principle linked the center to the Office of the Dean. One of the disciplines, economic demographics, then grew and became a department in its own right. The regional economics course, however, was ailing after losing most of the professors that created CEDEPLAR, who took up posts in the federal and state governments. I was a professor of economic theory, industrial economics, and the economics of science and technology, but I decided to save the regional economics course. I invited my master’s colleague Maurício Borges to this setup, and a professor who was coming back from England, Maria Regina Nabuco [1942–2004], also came on board. We fought tooth and nail for the regional economics course, and managed to save it.
After having been refused as a student by UFMG, you became its dean. What stands out from your time in that post?
Yes, I was dean, but before that I was the director of CEDEPLAR for two alternated terms, head of the Economics Department, and director of the Economic Sciences School. This may seem somewhat immodest, but I never applied for these placements; I was always pushed toward them. I was encouraged to become a candidate for dean, and got 72% of the votes. UFMG was already a great university, and I made little contribution to its improvement. What I did was try to impress a standard of internationalization upon it. I left the country and went to live in Chile, England, the US, with short periods in France and Italy. I went to China ten times and South Korea five, and to Russia, Japan, and Australia. Some of my colleagues said I was “a cosmopolitan hillbilly.” I always thought that Brazil needed to improve its presence on the international stage. When I was dean, we had a center for Indian studies, and I created four others: African, Chinese, South American, and European. During my last years at UFMG, I did a lot of work on the role of research and technology in development; I think that was based on my previous experience and the observations I made over ten trips to China. I left the Office of the Dean and went directly to the Ministry for Science, Technology, and Innovation in Brasília.
The regional economy has abandoned the cities. We need to go back and link urban and regional development again
You spent less than a year in that post. Why?
It was less than 10 months. We put together a program called Platforms of Knowledge, but unfortunately it was not implemented. The idea was to coordinate the entrepreneurial base with scientific research conducted in universities, and with support bodies. We actually designed several platforms, an example of which was in aeronautics, liaising with the Brazilian National Aerospace Corporation (EMBRAER), its suppliers, graduate programs in aeronautical engineering, and institutions such as BNDES and FINEP, but the platforms would be a longer-term program, implemented over 15 years, and they were not continued. President Dilma wanted me to carry on, but it wasn’t my personal wish to stay at the ministry. I had received an invitation to go to the London School of Economics and Political Science, which I had put off. That was a little irresponsible on my part, because I put the program together and then left the ministry. In England I became a member of the British Academy of Social Sciences and vice president of the Regional Science Association.
You retired from UFMG in 2014. What are you doing now?
I’m still doing research—I’m an emeritus professor of UFMG and, at the moment, a visiting professor on the graduate program at the Federal University of Bahia. I’m putting the finishing touches to two articles: one on Brazil’s position in the global scientific and technological race, and the other on the spatial restructuring of the Brazilian economy. I shall be significantly emphasizing cities’ regions of influence, a methodology adopted from a study known as Recig, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), released in 2018. The tradition of thinking about regional economics has abandoned the city, and we need to go back and link urban development with regional: the city structures and runs the territory. A study I published in Area Development and Policy, edited at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, looks at the urban crisis Brazil created with this megametropolization. We created this chaos—the concentration of crime, poverty, misery. Take a city like Rio de Janeiro, and all you hear about is crime. In the big Brazilian cities, the richest area has excellent living conditions. The urban periphery has neither education nor income. São Paulo currently has the highest concentration of poverty in Brazil. Rural poverty is no more—the current rural population is less than 15% of Brazil’s total. There’s rural retirement, there’s the family allowance, disability benefits, gas vouchers. The misery is in the urban peripheries of the cities.
How do you integrate regional and urban development?
The big contemporaneous experiment is what the Chinese are doing, restructuring their territory based on a network of cities and the offer of accessibility, with high-speed trains. Some years ago, through the Ministry of Planning, via CGEE [Center for Management and Strategic Studies], I coordinated the proposal for construction of Polycentric Brazil, in which the cities structure and run the territory. You can’t think about regional development outside the cities. Instead of overfilling the coastal metropolises, we proposed selecting a set of medium-sized towns to which we would provide accessibility and install public services, and then you can go after the private investment. But Brazil can’t plan. Planning is lacking in the country.
Are there no positive experiences in Brazil?
Brasília played a central role in the territorial restructuring of the country. Goiânia (state capital of Goiás) was structured around its proximity to Brasília and the expansion of the agricultural frontier—today the city is of relevant importance. And it’s not just state capitals: Barreiras, in the west of Bahia State, has become a reference center for soy. This also happens with the neighbors Petrolina, in Pernambuco State, and Juazeiro, in Bahia, based on irrigation and production of fruit. Those cities were born of expanding agriculture. In the Brazilian midwest, there is a number of medium-sized cities where you don’t see abject poverty. There’s a large concentration of services, with trade, schools, banks, hotels; because there is income. It’s a far cry from these cities in the east of Minas Gerais or inland Rio de Janeiro State that are frozen in time.
Do you still go to CEDEPLAR?
I go there almost every week. But I’m not giving classes. It’s a natural process to step away. What interests me is maintaining academic output.
The above interview was published with the title “Clelio Campolina: Brazil doesn’t plan” in issue 353 of July/2025.
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