Paulo de Tarso Santos
Paulo de Tarso Santos (12 January 1926 – 13 July 2019) was a Brazilian lawyer, teacher, and politician. He held several public roles, including mayor of Brasília in 1961, minister of education from June to October 1963, a Federal Deputy, São Paulo state secretary of education (1983–1985), and councillor of the São Paulo Court of Accounts (1985–1991), serving as its president from 1989 to 1991. Born in Minas Gerais, he earned a law degree from the University of São Paulo in 1949, winning major academic prizes, and later studied Civil Procedural Law and Business Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. He married Maria Nilse da Cunha Santos and had five children. In 2015, the family private archive was donated to the Federal District Public Archive.
Career highlights include working as a lawyer for the Brazilian Bank of Discounts (1948–1952) and entering politics with the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), supporting Jânio Quadros. He was elected to the Municipal Chamber of São Paulo in 1955 and Federal Deputy in 1958. Named mayor of Brasília by Quadros in February 1961, he served until Quadros’s resignation in August. As mayor, he created commissions that fostered public transport, culture, and social services, and helped urbanize Asa Norte and Núcleo Bandeirante; he also hired Brasília’s first teachers. Reelected as Federal Deputy in 1962, he was appointed Minister of Education in 1963 by President João Goulart and helped open the 1963 Summer Universiade.
He opposed the military dictatorship; his mandate was revoked by the Institutional Act, his political rights suspended for ten years, and he was arrested several times. He went into exile in Chile (1964–1971), working for the United Nations. Back in Brazil, he taught at the Brazilian Lawyers’ Institute from 1977 and joined the Brazilian Democratic Movement in 1979. He also worked in Ecuador as an education advisor. In 1983, Governor Franco Montoro appointed him São Paulo Secretary of Education; after leaving that post in 1985, he became a councillor of the São Paulo Court of Accounts, later serving as its president. After leaving the presidency of the Latin America Memorial Foundation in 1994, he returned to private legal practice. He died in July 2019 at 93 and was buried in Gethsêmani Cemetery, São Paulo.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 03:13 (CET).