Engenheiro Duarte Pacheco is the only senior figure from the dictatorship of the Estado Novo who continues in widespread national esteem. He is perhaps the most engaging of the half dozen figures of early twentieth century Portugal whose names are used nationwide as toponyms. Following his tragically early death, a national subscription fund was opened for a monument to his memory in Loulé, the town of his birth.
The monument, bearing the combined and voluntary work of ten contemporary sculptors, appears unfinished in an allegory of Pacheco´s life´s work. The monument was formally inaugurated by Dr Salazar on 16 November 1953, the tenth anniversary of Pacheco´s death. The inscription in bas relief on the surrounding wall is taken from Salazar´s eulogy: Uma vida velozmente vivida e inteiramente consagrada ao progresso pátrio - A life lived at speed and entirely dedicated to the advancement of his country. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more apt description of Pacheco´s life.
Duarte José Pacheco was one of eleven children whose mother died when he was six and who were orphaned when he was fourteen. His father was a leader of the Regenerador Party in Faro, and in 1907 was seconded by his political opponents to Faial in the Azores. Most sources give the year of Duarte´s birth as 1899 as it mistakenly appears on his baptismal record of 1903, but Pacheco himself later insisted that it was 1900. He maintained that he had not troubled to correct the record when he was important enough to do so because many people thought that he was even then too young for office.
Pacheco was by nature a joker, and his ready smile was a part of his personal magnetism, although contemporaries said it sometimes appeared to be mocking. As a boy, he was full of pranks some of which might nowadays seem reprehensible or even delinquent. For example, a favourite for him and his friends was o dragão in which they would form a line, each holding the belt of his friend in front, and they would run in and out of shops and bars throwing to the floor anything fragile or that might cause a noise. More responsible after his father´s death, at grammar school he became serious and was eventually a brilliant student who had time for nothing but work.
At seventeen, Duarte graduated from the Liceu in Faro with 90% and in 1923 graduated from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in electrotechnology with 95%, both marks showing his high standard of scholarship. In the meantime, he proved his republican credentials in the Batalhão Acadêmica at Monsanto during the 1919 monarchist uprising. Already supporting himself by giving private tutorials, he became lecturer, professor of mathematics and Director of the IST within the space of four years. As soon as he was appointed Director at age 27, he set about designing and building a new home for the IST, planning to use the quickest, cheapest and most modern means, reinforced concrete. His new IST became the first purpose-built university campus in Portugal.
As professor of mathematics in the lecture hall, he was always spectacularly well dressed, sometimes with a bowler hat. He would greet his pupils with a beaming Bom dia and pull out of his waistcoat pocket his fobwatch and a tram ticket with the resumé of the lesson written on the back and then write copiously and with impeccable logic on the blackboard. He hated the practice of making booklets out of lecture notes, and so he used to change the sequence of lectures every year. A great effort for him, but it also required students to be present at all of his lectures. Able students tended to like him; the less able chose another professor.
Appointed Minister for Public Education on his 28th birthday, he was dispatched to Coimbra by the President of the Council of Ministers in late April to invite Dr António de Oliveira Salazar to become Finance Minister in the government of General José Vicente de Freitas. Salazar stayed in government for the next forty years. During his ministry of only seven months in 1928, Pacheco had plans for the rebuilding of all secondary schools in Portugal. The evidence of his private secretary during that short period is eloquent: Pacheco was always one of the first to arrive at work every day and the last to leave, usually in the early hours of the morning; although he never had fixed meal times, he was always punctual when visiting the building of the new institute; sometimes he spent whole nights on a job, which astonished his officials.
Salazar formed his first government in 1932 from both his own generation and younger men, and he appointed Pacheco as his Minister of Public Works and Communications. At the age of 32, Pacheco followed Salazar´s example and surrounded himself with the most able technicians of his generation and revolutionized public works in a country which in other areas, such as culture, either slept or was suffocated. Although he had been educated in electrotechnology, Pacheco´s fame rests on his skill in managing professionals in other disciplines - architects, civil engineers and builders.
Pacheco is most notable for his work as Minister for Public Works and Communications, the post he occupied from July 1932 in Salazar´s first government to January 1936, when Salazar sacked him. The reason for his dismissal was that in Lisbon there were too many powerful opponents of Pacheco´s changes. Salazar reinstated him in the same post 30 months later in May 1938, and he held it until November 1943. These two years in the wilderness were a significant slice of Pacheco´s short life, and represent a major missed opportunity in the creation of the nation´s built environment. When he came back into government in May 1938 as Minister for Public Works and Communications, he also held concurrently the post of President of Lisbon Câmara. He was thus able to carry on his work with greatly strengthened authority. Pacheco is on record as saying on 25 May 1938, on his reappointment to the Ministry of Public Works, A man in public life, truly worthy of such a description, truly loving his country, can and should have only one aim, to serve it. To serve it always, everywhere and at all times. There is no doubt that he lived up to his own standard. Pacheco also asserted his support for the regime he served: My actions will consist in fulfilling and enforcing to the letter the orders of Dr Salazar… that monk dedicated to his country.
