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Uruguay Broad Front
In February 1971, Colorado Party dissident senators
Zelmar
Michelini (who was later assassinated in 1976) and Hugo
Batalla
formed the left-of-center Broad Front coalition in a bid
to break
the historical two-party system of Colorados and Blancos.
The
Socialist Party of Uruguay (Partido Socialista del
Uruguay--PSU),
one of Uruguay's oldest left-wing parties (founded in 1910
by
Emilio Frugoni), was one of its principal members.
Another core Broad Front member, founded in 1921, was
the
Communist Party of Uruguay (Partido Comunista del
Uruguay--PCU).
Rodney Arismendi, PCU general secretary since 1955,
returned to
Uruguay in November 1984 after many years as a resident of
Moscow; he died in 1988 and was replaced by Jaime Pérez, a
former
union leader. One of Sanguinetti's first acts after taking
office
was to lift the restrictions on the PCU (which had been
banned)
and its Moscow-line newspaper El Popular. The PCU
had only
an estimated 7,500 members in early 1990, but its
apparatus
controlled the majority of the country's labor unions.
The Broad Front had a strong following in Montevideo,
with a
presence in all social classes and all generations. Under
military rule (1973-85), the alliance's leader, General
(Retired)
Líber Seregni Mosquera, was arrested, the Broad Front was
outlawed, and its activists were persecuted. When national
elections were held in 1984, the military banned Seregni
from
running. Nevertheless, with Juan José Crottogini as its
candidate, the Broad Front received slightly more than 21
percent
of the total vote, compared with 18.5 percent in the 1971
national elections.
The Broad Front coalition generally agreed with the
Sanguinetti government's foreign policy and political
leadership
stances, but it was fundamentally opposed to its economic
policies. For example, the Broad Front favored increasing
real
incomes and opposed the government's export-oriented
policy.
Internal power struggles between moderate and radical
sectors
weakened the Broad Front in the late 1980s. By late 1987,
the
Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata
Cristiano--PDC) and
the People's Government Party (Partido por el Gobierno del
Pueblo--PGP) were feuding with other coalition members
over their
demand that the alliance be redefined to give their own
positions
greater weight. The PDC and PGP wanted to reduce the
hegemony of
the Marxist groups and their undue influence on Seregni's
public
stances. In 1988 a PDC faction broke away and sought an
understanding with one of the factions of the National
Party. The
PDC and PGP then proposed that the alliance should field
two
presidential candidates in the November 1989 elections:
Seregni
and PGP leader Batalla. The Broad Front's radical Marxist
and
communist sector, however, opposed the idea of running two
candidates because they regarded the front as a party and
not a
coalition. In December 1988, therefore, the leftist
parties of
the alliance decided that Seregni would be the Broad
Front's sole
candidate; but the PGP backed Batalla. The PDC and PGP
withdrew
from the alliance in February and March 1989,
respectively, over
the issue of presidential candidacies and the leftist
control of
the organization. Batalla's PGP, which accounted for about
40
percent of the alliance's electoral votes in 1984, had
been
responsible for eleven of the Broad Front's twenty-one
representatives and three of its six senators.
By May 1989, the Broad Front consisted of fourteen
parties.
Smaller ones included the People's Victory Party (Partido
por la
Victoria del Pueblo--PVP) and the Uruguayan Revolutionary
Movement of Independents (Movimiento de Independientes
Revolucionario Oriental--MRO), a pro-Cuban group founded
in 1961.
Five parties were accepted as members in May 1989: the
National
Liberation Movement-Tupamaros (Movimiento de Liberación
NacionalTupamaros --MLN-T); the 26th of March Movement (Movimiento
26 de
Marzo--26 M); the Trotskyite Socialist Workers' Party
(Partido
Socialista de los Trabajadores--PST); the Grito de Asencio
Integration Movement (Movimiento de Integración Grito de
Asencio); and a faction of the PDC.
The MLN-T--a former urban guerrilla organization
established
in 1962 and disbanded by the armed forces in 1972--was
given
amnesty by the General Assembly in March 1985. The MLN-T
reorganized and appeared in the political arena in July
1986 but
was not legally recognized until May 1989. With several
hundred
members, it was politically insignificant. In order to run
candidates in the November 1989 elections, the MLN-T,
together
with other ultra-leftist forces--the PVP, PST, and
MRO---created
the People's Participation Movement (Movimiento de
Participación
Popular--MPP).
In 1989 the Broad Front also included a subcoalition
called
the Advanced Democracy Party (Partido de Democracia
Avanzada),
which served as a front for the PCU; the People's Broad
Front
Movement (Movimiento Popular Frenteamplista--MPF); the
Broad
Front Unity Faction (Corriente de Unidad
Frenteamplista--CUFO);
the Pregón Movement (Movimiento Pregón); Alba Roballo's
left-wing
Liberal Party (Partido Liberal), a sub-lema that
joined in
April 1989; the Nationalist Action Movement (Movimiento de
Acción
Nacionalista--MAN), a nationalist organization; the
Popular and
Progressive Blanco Movement (Movimiento Popular Blanco y
Progresista--MBPP), a moderate left-wing party; and the
Movement
for the People's Government (Movimiento por el Gobierno
del
Pueblo--MGP), which became, in August 1986, the tenth
political
party of Uruguay to be created. The MGP subsequently
merged with
the PGP and adopted a social democratic program.
The Broad Front was organized like a communist party.
It had
a party congress with decision-making powers, under which
was a
central committee-like body called the national plenum. A
president, Seregni, headed the 108-member national plenum,
which
met at least once every two months. A political bureau,
which
included the president, exercised day-to-day authority.
Data as of December 1990
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