중남미

Recreated in the early days of the Brazilian Republic (jan./1890) as a central agency, the General Directory of Statistics (DGE) faced difficulties in consolidating the Brazilian statistical activity. A new time only was achieved when José Luiz Sayão de Bulhões Carvalho (1866-1940), a medical doctor specialist in public health dedicated to demographic studies and researches, took its direction (in two times) for almost 17 years. His performance applied to facilitate the interaction of DGE with its similar agencies in the federation. He idealized agreements with provincial statistical agencies; imagined counsels (or committees) for making collective decisions; imagined a national statistical conference based on the experience he has accumulated in two conferences of the International Statistical Institute (ISI); applied attention to the formation of a statistical professional community; encouraged and sponsored the translation of books, among other measures. The Census of 1920, he had made, the only major census at the Early Brazilian Republic, was guided by friendly relations with the federal and provincial statistical organizations and with the society (Catholic Church, media, unions, clubs etc.). It was, we can say, a modern census, using processing machines, and concluded in a timely fashion. The printed volumes of results were illustrated by pictorial graphics, also used at the Pavilion of Statistics, called (by the press) the Pavilion of Precisely Science, which fixed the presence of DGE in the International Exhibit of the Brazilian Independence Centennial (1822-1922). With his experience, anticipated the basis of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), created in 1936 as the new Brazilian Statistical central agency (still working with growing success), that can be see, in sum, as a measure of his success in a long term vision.