Brazilian historian, poet and diplomat Alberto da Costa e Silva dies

Historian, poet and diplomat Alberto da Costa e Silva, winner of the 2014 Camões Prize and considered Brazil’s greatest authority on African history, died this Sunday at the age of 92 in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian Academy of Letters announced.

The essayist and memoirist left a legacy of more than 40 books, including poetry, essays, history, children’s literature, memoirs, anthologies, versions and adaptations, recalls the Academia Brasileira de Letras (ABL) in a statement on its website.

Declaring itself in a message of “mourning,” the Academy said the Brazilian historian died “at home, a natural death.”

A diplomat, he was the Brazilian Ambassador to the Portuguese capital from 1989 to 1992, and then moved to Bogota, Colombia, after holding representative positions in various capitals such as Caracas, Rome or Washington.

Elected to the AL in 2000, he held the ninth chair and led the institution in the 2002-2003 biennium, serving as Secretary General in 2001, First Secretary in 2008 and 2009, Director of Libraries from 2010 to 2015, and was also a member – Correspondent of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and the Portuguese Academy of History.

Alberto Vasconcellos da Costa e Silva was born in São Paulo on May 12, 1931, completed primary school and went to high school in Fortaleza, and in 1943 moved to Rio de Janeiro, graduating in 1957 from the Rio Branco Institute.

In 2014 in Rio de Janeiro, when he received the Camões Prize, at the age of 83, he declared at the awards ceremony that he had a great passion for Africa, thanking the jury that unanimously selected him: “Although I am convinced that the awards are unfair, I welcome this with joy and big hugs,” he said.

The retired diplomat and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL), despite ten books of poetry published throughout his life, preferred to devote more attention to his career as a historian and, above all, as an explorer of the African continent.

The President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, mourned on social media this Sunday the death of the writer and diplomat.

Published in 2003, this work stands out among other books about Africa, namely The Hoe and the Spear (1992), A manilha eo libambo (2002) and Francisco Felix de Souza, Slave Trader (2004). and “A Walk in Africa” and “Africa Explained to My Children,” which he wrote for the little ones.

In addition to Poemas reunidos (2000), he published two volumes of memoirs: Espelho do Príncipe (1994) and Invenção do Drawing (2007).

Together with the essayist Alexei Bueno, he organized the collections Poemas de amor de Luís Vaz de Camões (1998) and the Anthology of Contemporary Portuguese Poetry in 1999, and together with the researcher Lilia Moritz Schwarz, he oversaw the publication of Jorge’s complete collection. works “Beloved” for Companhia das Letras.

He was awarded by Portugal, namely the Grand Crosses of the Order of the Infante, the Military Order of Sant’Iago da Espada and the Military Order of Christ.