Jose Serra

José Serra (; born March 19, 1942 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian politician, former secretary of state, congressman, senator, minister of Planning and Minister of Health, mayor of São Paulo and Governor of São Paulo state.

Background

José Serra was born in Mooca an Italian immigrant from Corigliano Calabro, Calabria Serra comes from a lower middle class family. His father was semi-illiterate and worked as a fruit vendor in a market of São Paulo, but he was able to send his only child to a college.

Serra interrupted his studies in engineering at age 22 and left the country in 1964, after the coup that established the military government era in Brazil. Serra had come to the attention of the authorities having served as President of the National Student Union União Nacional dos Estudantes (UNE), while he was a 4th year engineering student at the Polytechnic School at the University of São Paulo.

He was in exile from 1964 to 1978 in Bolivia, France, Chile, and the United States. In Chile, Jose Serra did his masters in Economics and taught Economics at the University of Chile (Universidad de Chile). There he also married Monica Allende (1967), then a top ballerina...
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