Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz

Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz, Director of the Review since 1986, died on 3 January. His death fills us with profound grief and leaves a deep vacuum in this organization. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean benefited for many years from the intellectual sparkle and human warmth of Mr. Pinto, who served for several years as Director of the Economic Development Division. What is more, he was one of the personalities who gave the ECLAC secretariat a clear institutional identity. The depth and clarity of his analyses of Chile and its development process were matched by his real dedication to Latin America, which inspired him to make solid and valuable contributions to the progress of ideas in our region. He belonged in his own right to the select group of those thinkers whose new categories and concepts afford others a richer vision of reality. It is not surprising, therefore, that followers and former students of his abound in the region. A person of great intellectual generosity, impatient with conventional wisdom and intolerance from all academic and political quarters, Aníbal Pinto received recognition from the international academic community, as embodied in the Raúl Prebisch Ibero­American Prize in Economics, an honorary doctorate from the University of Campinas, Brazil, and the Chilean National Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences for 1995. In recent months he received two further distinctions: first, a tribute from his ECLAC colleagues on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, and second, a collection of his writings published by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México which was presented to him in a ceremony held at the Santiago Book Fair in December 1995. ECLAC has been immensely fortunate in having among its senior officials great personalities who have left behind a legacy of values, principles and key ideas; institution­builders, if you will. If there is anything which distinguishes ECLAC from other United Nations bodies, it is this. Aníbal Pinto's name will undoubtedly be among those which resound the loudest. For this reason, and for his exceptional human qualities, we shall remember him with affection and admiration.