Herbert de Souza, a frail Brazilian sociologist who became the social conscience of a nation, died Saturday of liver failure, a complication of AIDS. He was 61.
Mr. De Souza, known to everyone in Brazil as Betinho, was an odd hero for his country, an untiring social crusader in a nation racked by injustice and a vast gap between rich and poor.
“I have a very simple image of myself. I am not a genius,” he told the Tribune in a 1995 interview. For many Brazilians, however, the former Maoist and longtime agnostic became a kind of saint.
Frail and gaunt and ravaged by complications of AIDS, which he contracted through a blood transfusion for hemophilia, Mr. De Souza led a remarkable series of campaigns in Brazil against crime, hunger, corruption and AIDS.
In 1992, he organized Brazil’s Movement for Political Ethics, a grass-roots effort that led to massive protests against alleged corruption in the government of former President Fernando Collor. Collor, faced with impeachment, resigned.
Mr. De Souza founded Ibase, a leading think-tank dedicated to analyzing the nation’s social and economic problems, and launched the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association.
Two of his brothers, also hemophiliacs, died of AIDS in the 1980s after receiving tainted blood.
But Mr. De Souza is best known for a campaign started in 1993, called Christmas Without Hunger, in which he persuaded Brazilians to donate tons of food to the country’s estimated 32 million hungry. In a country without food banks or a welfare net, a pale agnostic with AIDS became Santa Claus to the nation.
In 1994, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Mr. De Souza, who once preached social revolution, fled Brazil for nine years during the 1964-85 military dictatorship. He returned in 1979 when an amnesty was announced.