Brazil has played an integral role in the workings of the IDB from the beginning, not only as the Bank’s leading client in the region, but also as the catalyst for the IDB’s conception. “Without Brazil, the idea of an Inter-American Development Bank would never have been born,” said IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno during his inaugural address at the 47th Annual Board of Governors Meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in April 2006.
The Brazilian behind the push for the creation of a multilateral development institution for Latin America and the Caribbean was the renowned politician Juscelino Kubitschek, elected governor of Minas Gerais in 1950, and Brazil's president from 1956 to 1961.
Kubitschek's legacy in Brazil is so powerful that Moreno, in his inaugural address in Belo Horizonte, noted that Brazilian history can be divided into two chapters: before and after Kubitschek.
Apart from his accomplishments at home, including carrying out major road construction, establishing the auto industry and founding the new capital city of Brasilia—efforts echoed in his slogan, “fifty years of progress in five”—Kubitschek also had a larger vision for the hemisphere as a whole; a north-south effort to raise living standards in Latin America.
This ambitious hemispheric initiative that came to be known as the Pan-American Operation led to the creation of the Bank in 1959, to provide financing for economic, social and institutional development for countries in the region, as well as to promote integration.
To honor this founding father of the IDB, a bronze bust of Kubitschek, donated by the Cultural Secretary of Minas Gerais and the City of Belo Horizonte, will be on permanent display at Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., following its unveiling on May 19, 2006.
Current Governor of Minas Gerais Aécio Neves attended the ceremony and signed four memoranda of understanding with the IDB to undertake development initiatives in Minas Gerais.
The memoranda include initiatives to develop business tourism, prepare a model for a beltway construction project in Belo Horizonte, support the production and commercialization of the state’s arts and crafts industry, and formulate a loan proposal for state development planning and management in Minas Gerais.
The IDB has established the Juscelino Kubitschek Prize, to be awarded in commemoration of the Bank’s 50th anniversary in 2009, to the leader or statesman who best exhibits the spirit of development once embodied by this influential Brazilian figure.