Uruguay THE GROWTH OF MILITARY INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICS
A guard stands at a monument to General Artigas in
preparation for a memorial ceremony
Courtesy United States Department of Defense
Until the 1960s, the military was mostly ignored by
politicians and played a marginal role in Uruguayan
political
life. A military career lacked prestige and respect.
Officers
came mainly from the lower middle class in the small towns
and
cities of the interior; troops were recruited from the
lowest
strata of the rural sector, mainly from the
estancias
(ranches) or from the ranks of the unemployed in the urban
shantytowns (cantegriles).
In the second half of the 1960s, the military began to
function in a limited law enforcement capacity after the
national
economy suffered a serious downturn and public discontent
increasingly came to disrupt internal order. Initially
backing up
the National Police in confrontations with union members,
students, and other protesters, the military was drawn
further
into the struggle as the decade progressed, manning road
blocks,
conducting searches, and eventually becoming targets
themselves.
The most significant threat to public order was the growth
of the
urban guerrilla movement known as the MLN-T, whose
adherents were
more commonly known as Tupamaros.
The armed forces leadership was divided internally over
the
military's new role, but antipathy toward the Tupamaros'
Marxist
political philosophy was strong among the politically
conservative, staunchly anticommunist military leadership.
Initially, the police had been charged with handling the
problem,
but as the disorder worsened, many in the armed forces
grew
impatient with the police's lack of success. When
President Jorge
Pacheco Areco (1967-72) called on the army to take over
responsibility for the problem on September 9, 1971, the
Army
Intelligence Service began to draw up a military
offensive. After
the Tupamaros escalated the guerrilla campaign in April
1972,
President Bordaberry, Pacheco's successor, and the General
Assembly declared a state of "internal war" against them.
The
army was prepared, and the insurgency was crushed within a
few
months
(see Pachequism, 1967-72
, ch. 1).
By this time, however, the armed forces leadership had
agreed
that the military's duty to the nation required it to
pursue a
level of internal order that was untroubled by leftist,
student,
labor, or other opposition or protest. The suspension of
constitutional protections during the state of internal
war was
therefore prolonged by new legislation that put harsh
controls on
the press and on dissent. The new laws also stated that
persons
charged with crimes against the national security were
denied
normal legal protections and were subject to preventive
detention
and trial in military courts.
In June 1973, the military compelled President
Bordaberry to
accept suspension of the democratic process and institute
military rule through the creation of the National
Security
Council (Consejo de Seguridad Nacional--Cosena), made up
of the
commanders in chief of the army, navy, and air force, plus
an
additional senior military officer, and the ministers of
national
defense, interior, and foreign affairs. The General
Assembly was
abolished on June 27 and replaced with the thirty-member
Council
of State (Consejo de Estado). A new armed forces organic
law,
adopted in February 1974, assigned the military the role
of
protector of the nation's traditional way of life against
a
communist threat. Beyond that general mission, however,
the
military had no coherent ideological agenda or any
organized plan
for national development. No charismatic military leader
emerged
to centralize power. Instead, decision making was
characterized
by consensus among senior officers, who were determined to
use
the military's new powers to impose internal order
(see The Military Government, 1973-85
, ch. 1).
Until the 1972-73 period, the Uruguayan armed forces
were
among the least politicized in Latin America. The military
had
little experience in political affairs and no corporate
political
philosophy beyond a belief in democracy and an antipathy
toward
communism and extreme leftist political thought. Many
within the
armed forces viewed the military's assumption of power in
1973 as
a necessary but unfortunate interruption of the nation's
democratic tradition. A significant element within the
military
was never comfortable with the institution's expanded
role,
however. Nonetheless, during the period of military rule,
senior
and sometimes mid-level officers served in positions of
responsibility in various government agencies, the
National
Police, some businesses, and autonomous entities
(
autonomous agencies or state enterprises; see Glossary). In general,
military personnel assigned to such posts found themselves
poorly
prepared in terms of either training or education to take
on new
responsibilities.
During the 1973-80 period, the military moved
ruthlessly
against all it deemed a security threat. An estimated
6,000
citizens were tried in the military courts, and critics
charged
that tens of thousands were detained, denied legal rights,
or
abused or tortured. During the same period, the military
grew
from some 22,000 to an estimated 30,000, and military
officers
began to serve as heads of state enterprises and as
governors of
departments.
In 1980 the military government attempted to legitimize
the
armed forces' political role by submitting to public
referendum a
new constitution that effectively gave the armed forces
veto
power within a restricted democracy. The regime publicly
campaigned that the constitution moved the nation toward
democracy. The government also identified opposition to
the
referendum with support for communism or, conversely, with
support for continued military rule. Nonetheless,
opposition
positions were permitted expression, and the proposed
constitution was rejected by 57 percent of the populace.
The armed forces leadership then instituted a process
of slow
disengagement from economic, political, and administrative
positions of power. Surprising many local and foreign
observers,
the president of the Council of the Nation (Consejo de la
Nación,
consisting of the Council of State and twenty-eight
military
officers), which became the supreme governing body in
1976,
appointed a retired military general as president of an
interim
administration designed to initiate a process to return
the
country to civilian leadership in 1985. In March 1984, the
military negotiated the Naval Club Pact with most of the
nation's
political parties to design the transition, which included
reestablishment of the General Assembly. In March 1985, a
new
civilian president, Julio María Sanguinetti Cairolo
(1985-90),
was inaugurated. After 1985 the military leadership
devoted
itself to the management of a depoliticized and
professional
armed forces establishment.
The process of the military's withdrawal from national
political life was difficult. There were charges in the
1985-86
period, for instance, that the armed forces intelligence
services
continued to monitor opposition groups as potential
sources of
subversion. Such charges had died down by the late 1980s,
after
passage of a new armed forces law that reaffirmed the
supremacy
of civilian command and after senior military leaders made
public
statements of allegiance to civilian democratic rule.
The most difficult issue facing the nation in the wake
of the
return to civilian rule was how to treat military officers
who
had committed offenses during the period of military rule.
In an
effort to calm military and police fears and to put the
nation's
troubled past behind it, the Chamber of Representatives
passed,
by a vote of sixty to thirty-seven, an amnesty bill on
December
22, 1986, to prevent prosecution of nearly all such
offenses.
Almost immediately, opponents of the law launched a
movement to
bring the bill to a public referendum. After protracted
legal
deliberations, the bill was placed before the voters in
1989, and
the public voted to retain the amnesty provisions. As of
the end
of 1990, the military continued to play a very minor role
in the
national economic and political life, and officers were no
longer
seconded to serve in the civilian administration.
Data as of December 1990
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