Assis Chateaubriand - Biography

Biography

Assis Chateaubriand was founder and director of the then main press chain of Brazil, the Diários Associados: 34 newspapers, 36 radio stations, 18 television stations, one news agency, one weekly magazine (O Cruzeiro), one monthly magazine (A Cigarra) as well as many magazines for children.

Chateaubriand began as a journalist at the age of 15, working for the newspaper Gazeta do Norte. He also wrote for Jornal Pequeno and Diário de Pernambuco. In 1917, having moved to Rio de Janeiro, he worked for Correio da Manhã. In this newspaper, he would publish his impressions about his trip to Europe, in 1920.

In 1924, Chatô became the director of O Jornal. This was his first step toward building his press empire, to which were added important newspapers from Brazil, such as Diário de Pernambuco (the oldest newspaper in Latin America) and Jornal do Commercio (the oldest newspaper in Rio de Janeiro). In the following year, a newspaper from São Paulo was added to his press conglomerate: Diário da Noite.

From a meager and troublesome youth in the northeast of Brazil – he only learned how to read at the age of 10 – Chateaubriand followed the trail of a self-made man into a position of quasi monopoly in Brazilian press. In the state of Pernambuco, as a young lawyer, he rapidly grew to fame through a series of verbal clashes, or polemics, with political and literary figures. At the same time, he managed, still in his twenties, to become Professor of Roman Law at the Law Faculty of Recife, after a hard-fought examination, being formally appointed for the post only after various clashes with the state's politicos, among them General Dantas Barreto and Dr. Manuel Borba. During his struggle he made powerful friends and allies in Rio de Janeiro. What finally settled the battle was a telegram from the president of the republic, Wenceslau Brás, on December 8, 1915. His stunning victory in attaining the position as professor further became a platform for his even more ambitious goal; to own a newspaper of his own by the age of thirty. Intelligent, learned, hard-headed and stubborn, he soon earned a reputation as a self-made man, who had no scruples about approaching and lobbying for influential people who might be serviceable to his personal interests; already as a teenager, he had already made friends with the powerful local Lundgren family of industrialists.

After moving to Rio, Chateaubriand worked as a journalist and lawyer, and it was in the latter capacity that he made friends with influential people, especially magnates connected with the interests of foreign corporations who wanted to hedge through lobbying against nationalist politics, among them the public utilities trust Light & Co's CEO Alexander McKenzie and the American mining magnate Percival Farqhuar. After becoming a press tycoon, he eventually combined undeniable journalistic feeling with a totally unscrupulous behaviour, using as his main tool for money making the most extensive use of libel and blackmail, directed against magnates and authorities.: in the promotion of his pet projects – as in his campaign for the building of airports and training of pilots across Brazil – he would resort to any means whatsoever, having even ordered his thugs to shoot a German businessman who refused to be blackmailed by him Later in life, he would refurbish his São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) with a whole collection of old European masters' works purchased at bargain prices in impoverished post-WW II Europe, by using funds extorted through blackmail from various Brazilian businessmen. Chateaubriand never made a great secret about his peculiar business strategies: "excellency in business means buying without money" he once allegedly said.