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nanciamento do agronegócio, diante da iminente falta de capacidade do Estado para atender as demandas do setor. Confirmando o que as lideranças já imaginavam, o estudo revelou que o colapso no sistema de crédito rural seria inevitável. Era preciso uma ação rápida, e as cooperativas já tinham um projeto em desenvolvimento.
No início dos anos 80, a Fecotrigo reuniu nove das doze Caixas Rurais que ainda restavam no Rio Grande do Sul e lançou o desafio de criar uma Central das Cooperativas de Crédito. Além de preservar as remanescentes, as lideranças tinham uma perspectiva maior. A in­ tenção era abrir caminho no Banco Central para modificar as normas que regulavam as cooperativas de crédito, para, um dia, criar um sis­ tema de crédito cooperativo. A aspiração era compartilhada com os associados que participavam das reuniões à época, mas, por cautela, tinha de ser ocultada do Banco Central, conforme relata
Mário Kruel Guimarães: “Todos os agricultores sabiam o
que a gente queria, mas nós não queríamos que isso fosse
revelado. O projeto visava a um cooperativismo de crédito
com uma confederação e um banco em nível nacional, com
Centrais estaduais e cooperativas regionais”.
Memória
Looking back
modify the credit union regulations and eventually create, down the road, a cooperative financial system. The members who attended the meetings shared this goal, but out of caution, they did not convey
this to the Central Bank. As Mário Kruel Guimarães explains, “All the agricultural producers knew what they wanted, but we didn’t want to show our hand. The plan envisioned financial cooperativism with a confederation and a national bank, with state-wide Regional Centers and regional credit unions.”
On October 27, 1980, an organized system of credit unions was born with the creation of the Rural
Credit Union Regional Center of Rio Grande do Sul Ltd.
(Cocecrer-RS), known today as Central Sicredi Sul (the Sicredi South Regional Center). The meeting took place in the Fecotrigo building in Porto Alegre, also chosen as the headquarters for the new entity. Werno Blasio Neumann, elected as its first president, emphasized in his inaugural speech that the Regional Center was created to meet “the needs of the farmers ... due to the general credit shortage and the
high cost of bank intermediaries.”21 The creation of the Regional Center was a sign of hope that the nearly dormant ideal of collective enterprise had been reignited.