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Uruguay The Return of Civilians
General Máximo Tajes (1886-90), who was appointed
president
by the General Assembly, tried to restore the constitution
and
remove the military chiefs who had supported Santos.
During the
Tajes administration, civilian political activity resumed.
At the
end of the Tajes term, Julio Herrera y Obes was elected
president
(1890-94). Herrera y Obes belonged to the Colorado Party,
had
been an adviser to his predecessor, and was instrumental
in the
transition process that displaced the military from power.
He
selected his aides from among a small group of friends and
was
convinced that the executive had to play a leading role in
elections and the makeup of the General Assembly. This
policy,
called the "directing influence," was resisted by a sector
of the
Colorado Party led by José Batlle y Ordóñez, son of the
former
president, Lorenzo Batlle y Grau.
In 1894, after much internal debate, the General
Assembly
appointed Juan Idiarte Borda (1894-97), a member of the
inner
circle of the departing administration, as the new
president. But
Herrera y Obes and Borda had succeeded in irritating the
National
Party, when the latter was granted control of only three
of the
four departments agreed on in the 1872 pact between the
two rival
parties.
In 1897 discontent led an armed uprising by Blanco
forces.
The insurrection was led by Aparicio Saravia, a caudillo
from a
ranching family originally from the Brazilian state of Rio
Grande
do Sul who was involved in military and political affairs
on both
sides of the border. The Saravia revolution raised the
flag of
electoral guarantees, the secret ballot, and proportional
representation. Military action had not yet decided the
situation
when President Borda was assassinated. The president of
the
Senate (the upper house of the General Assembly), Juan
Lindolfo
Cuestas (1897-1903), served as provisional president until
1899,
when he was elected constitutional president. Cuestas
quickly
signed a peace agreement with the National Party, giving
it
control over six of Uruguay's departments and promising
all
citizens their political rights. An anticlericalist,
Cuestas
placed restrictions on the exercise of Roman Catholicism
and
tried to prevent admission to the country of friars and
priests.
A majority of the members of the General Assembly, who
had
ties to the Herrera y Obes faction, submitted another
presidential candidate in 1898 for the scheduled election.
Cuestas, unwilling to give up power, led a coup d'état. He
included members of the opposition in his government in a
rudimentary attempt at proportional representation. Late
that
same year, the Cuestas regime promulgated the Permanent
Civil
Register Law, dealing with electoral matters, and the
Elections
Law, formally establishing the principle of minority
representation. Through this legislation, the opposition
gained
access to one-third of the seats if it obtained one-fourth
of the
total votes.
The political consensus achieved by Cuestas resulted in
the
unanimous support by the General Assembly for his
candidacy and
appointment as constitutional president in 1899. In fact,
however, political peace was an illusion. There were, in
effect,
two countries, one Blanco and one Colorado. President
Cuestas had
to send an envoy to caudillo Saravia, near the border with
Brazil, in order to coordinate government action. This
precarious
balance would break down in 1903 when Batlle y Ordóñez
took
power.
In spite of political and economic fluctuations, the
flow of
immigrants continued. From the 1870s to the 1910s,
Uruguay's
population doubled to just over 1 million inhabitants, 30
percent
of whom lived in Montevideo. Montevideo also continued to
experience modernization, including the installation of a
telephone system (1878) and public lighting (1886). At the
same
time, the euphoria and speculation of the 1870s and 1880s
saw a
proliferation of banks and corporations and a stimulation
of land
sales, as well as the construction of multifamily
dwellings.
The economic crisis of 1890 was a traumatic event for
Uruguayan society. Bankruptcies followed one after
another, and
the banking system saw the collapse of a key banking
institution,
created by a Spanish financier, which had served the needs
of the
state and promoted production and construction.
The ruling elite felt the impact, and some of its more
progressive sectors directed their efforts to the creation
of a
development model for the country. They were aware of both
the
need to encourage agricultural and industrial development
and the
need to redefine the limits of the state. The growing
importance
of British investment had stimulated the rise of economic
nationalism and had, by 1898, provoked more active state
intervention.
State intervention in the economy continued in 1896
when the
electric utility company was transferred to the
municipality of
Montevideo and the Bank of Uruguay (Banco de la República
Oriental del Uruguay--BROU) was created as an autonomous
entity
(
autonomous agency or state enterprise; see Glossary).
Moreover,
under Cuestas's administration, the state undertook
construction
of the modern harbor of Montevideo, in reaction to the new
facility in Buenos Aires, which had absorbed part of the
river
traffic with Paraguay and the Argentine littoral.
Nevertheless,
the nationalization of economic activities and the
creation of
state enterprises did not fully gather momentum until the
administration of Batlle y Ordóñez.
Data as of December 1990
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