In Memoriam: Celso Daniel (1951-2002)
By Horst Rutsch

Like the rest of the world, I was shocked and stunned to learn of the brutal abduction and assassination of Mayor Celso Daniel in Brazil. The high-profile killing of Mayor Daniel has outraged the Brazilian public, and many see it as yet another failure of the state authorities to curb violence and organized crime, with the number of kidnappings in Sao Paolo nearly quintupling in 2001. Others have speculated that the kidnapping was politically motivated. Daniel, a co-founder and political coordinator of the leftist Workers Party of Brazil, was one of several left-wing mayors who had recently received death threats. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has pledged to wage a “war against organized crime, against banditry and against impunity”.

As the mayor of Santo André, an industrial suburb of greater Sao Paolo in Brazil’s most populous state, Daniel was also an internationally respected proponent of participatory urban governance and social inclusion. I had met Mayor Daniel last year in Nairobi, during the preparations for the General Assembly special session on the five-year review of the Habitat Agenda (Istanbul+5). There, he presented his municipal administration’s experience in implementing an integrated programme aimed at social inclusion.

Speaking with Mayor Daniel, I was impressed by his passionate, yet unassuming intellectualism. Key to his understanding of the challenges of local authorities was the concept of exclusion, which he considered a much broader concept that poverty. At our invitation, Mayor Daniel contributed an exclusive article, “Participatory Urban Governance: The Experience of Santo André”, which highlighted the major successes and challenges of the integrated social inclusion programme, which recently was renewed for another four-year term.

Just as Santo André was a model for participatory urban governance to local authorities around the world, Celso Daniel, 50, was a moderate leftist who was not only an inspiring mayor but also a courageous human being. Re-elected last year for a third term, Mayor Daniel was kidnapped on 18 January and found shot dead two days later, a victim of the forces he struggled against all his life -- injustice and impunity.


Read "The Experience of Santo André", an article by Celso Daniel that appeared in the UN Chronicle, Volume XXXVIII, Number 1 in March of 2001.