Normally,
I would arrive at the house of
professor Jose Oliveira Fonseca,
on Carlos Perreira street, at
five in the morning. Every morning,
from Monday to Saturday, there
we would be for our class of syntax
analysis and other more objective
topics of the Portuguese language.
We weren’t many students,
all together, but we were extremely
curious and interested, principally
Mauro Lafeta, Corby Aquino, Afranio
Nogueira, Odil Oliveira and I.
They, candidates for the public
concourse of Law school in Pouso
Alegre or Niteroi; myself, a student
of Linguistics, taking advantage
of the magnificence of professor
Fonseca, unequalled and unsurpassed
in the subject of all Montes Claros.
It was a wonderful time, cheerful,
brimming with mature enthusiasm,
dreams of persons that, at a certain
time of calling in life, know
what to do in life and how to
do it.
Afranio has just left his special
classes for the conclusion of
grade school students and already
studied at night he last phases
to pass high school. A great effort
of a year and a half between primary
school and the university. Mauro
with all his God-given pose, serious,
compenetrated, a dreamer, almost
demanded to be referred to as
“doctor”. It was all
a dream, even though the professor
had never once given us a cup
of coffee to help us wake us completely
up at such a wee hour…
It was around there, at the time
of change from late night to early
dawn, mornings of a delicious
coolness that required no or little
protection, that the professor
and we made the first proposals
for the foundation of the Law
school. Between one syntax analysis
and another, between one verse
and a noun, a new observation
about the future of the second
school for the creation of the
University of Montes Claros. Who
would be willing to collaborate?
With what lawyers and professors
would we be able to count on to
form the school staff? Who would
be capable of the seat of the
first director? Where would it
be located? In what building?
Where would financial support
be found? They were questions
and more questions, so present
as their originators. It didn’t
take long, the phase of dreams
and coagitations, and in less
than one month, We were already
in the street alisting help, and
finding first, in the person of
the state deputy, Euler Lafetá,
uncle of Mauro and a man close
to the government, and federal
inspector of schools, Jose Monteiro
Fonseca, who was more enthusiastic
than we, ourselves. The battle
began to thicken, the spirit of
determination was born. Mauro,
each day becoming more and more
enthralled with the project, and
anticipatedly victorious.
We
began our first interviews of
the principal lawyers, through
a special commission-Mauro, Afranio
and I- in a unfolding of work
done before by the professor Francolino
Santos and the industrialist Corby.
No one could imagine or preview
the human and professional reactions
before a challenge such as this.
Who could judge where the personal
interest would be, the unselfishness
the enthusiasm or, the opposite,
the fear of future competition.
Who would believe in we, dreamers,
striving to build from the bottom
up, inverting the whole logical
sequence of the foundation of
a university? Students, anticipating
and doing the structuring work
of the professors. Really, before
our proposal, future professors
showed themselves to be happy
or sad with it, in the majority
of times, exceedingly ironic.
Who were really those students,
who ousadamente wanted to found
a law school in Montes Claros?
Who knows, one of those three
young and dreamers inbued with
the university spirit? Crazy is
what they called us…why
didn’t we simply go to another
city to study, as so many other
Montes Claros natives had done
before instead of trying to found
our own university? Traveling
around touring the country would
be a lot easier than founding
a university…
Two
factors became decisive in our
battle: The JMC, principal newspaper
of Montes Claros was against it,
affirming the desnecessity of
new bacharrels, this, because
they felt that our Brazil and
the world was already full of
lawyers. Happily professor João
Luiz de Almeida the deputies Francelino
Perreira and Cicero Dumont showed
themselved to be very interested
in our project. Doctor João
Luiz ceded various classrooms
of his school to us and put himself
at our disposition as the first
dean; Francelino took the ideas
and the plans directly to the
state governor Magalhães
Pinto; Cicero organized the by-laws
of the foundation. From that moment
on, no one could hold him down.
Friend and enemies alike, stimulated
us still more in our battle. The
reaction of the midia provoked
a challenge, the help of powerful
friends gave us the last condiments
to our sprouting university.
Today,
a happy ending with our law school
completing twenty years! We have
very well guarded the tapes of
the definite day of the foundation,
reunion realized on São
Francisco street, downtown, at
the federal school office, workroom
of the inspector Jose Monteiro
Fonseca!
