Assis Chateaubriand

Who was Assis Chateaubriand?

Francisco de Assis Chateaubriand Bandeira de Melo, best known as Assis Chateaubriand and also nicknamed Chatô, was a Brazilian lawyer, journalist, politician and diplomat. He was born in Umbuzeiro, state of Paraíba, in the Northeast of Brazil, on October 4, 1892, and died on April 4, 1968, in São Paulo. He was one of the most influential public figures in Brazil during the 1940s and the 1950s, becoming notable as a journalist, an entrepreneur, an arts patron as well as a politician. Chateaubriand was appointed Embassador of Brazil to the United Kingdom, position he held from 1957 to 1961. He was also a lawyer and Professor of Law, writer and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, occupying its 37th chair from 1954 until his death in 1968.

Chateaubriand was a media mogul in Brazil between the late 1930s and the early 1960s and the owner of Diários Associados, a conglomerate that counted at its peak more than a hundred newspapers, radio and TV stations, magazines and a telegraphic agency. He is also known as the co-creator and founder, in 1947, of the São Paulo Museum of Art, together with Pietro Maria Bardi. Chateubriand also founded the first television network of Latin America and the fifth in the world. He was Senator of the Republic between 1952 and 1957.