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Uruguay Foreign Policy in 1990
The general direction of Uruguayan foreign policy was
not
expected to change significantly under President Lacalle.
His
newly designated foreign affairs minister, Héctor Gros
Espiell,
told reporters in January 1990 that although there would
be
specific changes, adjustments, and differing viewpoints,
the
Lacalle government intended to maintain the general
guidelines of
Uruguay's existing foreign policy. Gros Espiell, the
former head
of Uruguay's School of Diplomacy, also noted, however,
that under
the new Foreign Service Law to be submitted to the General
Assembly by the Lacalle government, the foreign service
would be
entirely revamped to make its operations more responsive
to the
national interests.
Gros Espiell also explained that the Lacalle
government's
foreign policy would emphasize the trend toward regional
integration and that Uruguay would continue pursuing its
integration policy with Argentina and Brazil. According to
Gros
Espiell, the Río de la Plata Basin would be Uruguay's
first
priority in foreign policy, with the Buenos
Aires-Montevideo-
Brasilia axis functioning in coordination with the
MontevideoAsunción -La Paz axis. In talks with the presidents of
Argentina,
Brazil, and Paraguay in early 1990, Lacalle discussed ways
to
increase regional integration in the Río de la Plata
Basin. One
of Lacalle's foreign policy goals was to integrate Bolivia
and
Paraguay into the Brazilian-Uruguayan-Argentine
integration
agreements and grant them free port facilities.
Lacalle favored using the Group of Eight and ALADI as
instruments for promoting, with Argentina, a new Latin
American
integration process. In January 1990, he worked toward
this
through what he called the Group of Seven (because
Panama's
membership was suspended in February 1988) with the
intention of
organizing, within five to ten years, a true Latin
American
common market. The Lacalle government wanted the Group of
Eight
(whose name was changed in 1990 to the Group of Rio) to
expand to
include Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Paraguay.
Lacalle told United States president George H.W. Bush
during
their unofficial meeting at the White House on February 5,
1990,
that Uruguay could play an important role in the Río de la
Plata
Basin, but this role did not materialize in 1990. The
Lacalle
government reportedly had become uneasy over what it
perceived to
be a lack of interest toward integration with Uruguay
shown by
Argentina and Brazil
(see Economic Integration
, ch. 3).
Both pro-United States and pro-free market, Lacalle was
expected to enjoy excellent relations with the Bush
administration. Lacalle's support of the United States
varied,
however, depending on the issue. When the United States
military
intervened in Panama in December 1989, Lacalle refused to
recognize the new Panamanian government of Guillermo
Endara.
After the United States troops retreated to the Canal Zone
and
their number was reduced to preintervention levels,
Lacalle
announced in March 1990 that his government would
normalize
relations with Panama by recognizing the Endara
government. In
keeping with its traditional position condemning the use
of
force, the Lacalle government denounced the invasion of
Kuwait by
Iraq in early August 1990, urged action by the UN Security
Council, and endorsed the UN sanctions against Iraq.
On other issues, Lacalle favored the United States
policy
position on the foreign debt problem and negotiated
Uruguay's
external debt based on a proposal presented by Secretary
of the
Treasury Nicolas Brady in March 1989. The Brady Plan
called for
creditor banks to write off a portion of a developing
country's
indebtedness in return for guaranteeing repayment of the
remaining debt
(see Foreign Debt
, ch. 3). Lacalle
enthusiastically endorsed President Bush's
Enterprise for the
Americas Initiative (see Glossary), made on June 27, 1990,
for
promoting the development of Latin America by opening a
free-trade partnership with the region, either on a bilateral
or on a
multilateral basis. Lacalle was somewhat ambivalent,
however,
toward the United States policy on drug trafficking. He
viewed
the issue as two sided, involving not only the Latin
American
producing countries but also the principal consuming
country, the
United States.
* * *
Although few books on Uruguay's government and politics
in
the 1980s were available in 1990, Uruguay has been the
subject of
considerable scholarly research. M.H.J. Finch and Alicia
Casas de
Barrán's Uruguay lists comprehensively and
evaluates
succinctly major sources, including recent doctoral
dissertations, on all aspects of Uruguay. A dated but
still
historically useful book is Russell H. Fitzgibbon's
Uruguay:
Portrait of a Democracy. A more up-to-date
introduction to
the country is Martin Weinstein's Uruguay: Democracy at
the
Crossroads; his earlier book, Uruguay: The Politics
of
Failure, analyzes the causes of Uruguay's descent from
a
model democracy to a military dictatorship. The human
rights
abuses committed by the military are detailed in Lawrence
Weschler's A Miracle, a Universe: Settling Accounts
with
Torturers. An incisive fact-filled chapter on
Uruguay's party
system may be found in Party Politics and Elections in
Latin
America by Ronald H. McDonald and J. Mark Ruhl.
In-depth
analyses of the political party system in the 1970s and
early
1980s can be found in two Yale University doctoral
dissertations:
Charles Guy Gillespie's "Party Strategies and
Redemocratization,"
and Luis E. González's "Political Structures and the
Prospects
for Democracy in Uruguay." Gillespie's Negotiating
Democracy:
Politicians and Generals in Uruguay focuses on
Uruguay's
transition to democracy. An informative monograph on the
November
1989 elections is Weinstein's "Consolidating Democracy in
Uruguay: The Sea Change of the 1989 Elections." (For
further
information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1990
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