This article examines the training of development planners in north-eastern Brazil
by the Superintendency for the Development of the North-East (SUDENE) in the
1960s and 1970s. Supported by the Economic Commission for Latin America
(ECLA), SUDENE held courses on development and economic and social planning
and trained generations of specialists with a view to tackling inequalities and
underdevelopment in the region. It was one of the main channels for the dissemination
of ECLA ideas in Brazil, acting as a producer of knowledge about the regional
situation, a laboratory for institutional reforms to modernize the bureaucratic
machinery and a standard-bearer for the ideology of national developmentalism.
Institutional documents, press coverage and testimonials from former members
of SUDENE are used to reconstruct the activities involved in training specialist
staff and the processes that led to the constitution, expansion and disbanding of
the SUDENE technical team.