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Uruguay The Transition to Democracy, 1984-85
In March 1984, the PIT-CNT organized a civil strike and
freed
General Líber Seregni Mosquera, leader of the Broad Front,
whom
the military had imprisoned since January 11, 1976. By
mid-1984
yet another civil strike took place, this time organized
by
political parties and social groups. Blanco Senator
Ferreira
returned from exile. His subsequent imprisonment
essentially
deprived the National Party of the opportunity to
participate in
the meetings between politicians and the military that
ended with
the Naval Club Pact. Signed by the armed forces and
representatives from the Colorado Party, UC, and Broad
Front,
this pact called for national elections to be held that
same year
on the traditional last Sunday in November.
The discussions at the Naval Club saw the military give
up
its long-sought goal of a Cosena dominated by the military
and
with virtual veto power over all civilian government
decisions.
The military now settled for an advisory board that would
be
controlled by the president and the cabinet. Some
transitional
features were agreed to by the civilian leadership, mostly
relating to the ability of the armed forces to maintain
its
seniority system in the naming of the commanders of the
various
military services. The military also agreed to review the
cases
of all political prisoners who had served at least half of
their
sentences. Moreover, the military acquiesced to the
relegalization of the left, although the PCU remained
officially
banned (until March 1985). The Communists were nonetheless
able
to run stand-in candidates under their own list within the
leftist coalition. Nothing was said about the question of
human
rights violations by the dictatorship.
The election results were no great surprise. With
Ferreira
prohibited from heading the Blanco ticket and a similar
fate for
Seregni of the Broad Front, and with effective use of
young
newcomers and a savvy media campaign, the Colorado Party
won. The
Colorados received 41 percent of the vote; the Blancos, 34
percent; and the Broad Front, 21 percent. The UC received
2.5
percent of the vote. Within the Broad Front's leftist
coalition,
social democratic Senator Hugo Batalla, who headed List
99, a
faction started by Zelmar Michelini in 1971, was the big
winner,
garnering over 40 percent of the alliance's vote. For the
victorious Colorados, former President Pacheco brought the
party
25 percent of its vote. However, the Colorado presidential
ticket
receiving the most votes (in a system that allowed
multiple
candidacies for president in each party) was headed by
Sanguinetti. After being sworn in as president on March 1,
1985,
Sanguinetti led the transition to democracy. He did so
with
dignity and fairness, although the legacy of human rights
violations under the dictatorship proved a troublesome
problem
(see Democratic Consolidation, 1985-90
, ch. 4).
* * *
Eduardo Acevedo's voluminous work Anales históricos
del
Uruguay, which starts in the sixteenth century and
ends in
1930, provides a solid bibliographical background for both
political and socioeconomic changes. A more modern
version,
restricted to the 1851-1914 period, may be found in José
Pedro
Barrán and Benjamín Nahum's, Historia rural del Uruguay
moderno. This seven-volume work contains an analysis
of
Uruguay's main sources of wealth, as well as a review of
political events and social change.
Historiographical production on Uruguay slowed down
beginning
in 1930, a fact demonstrated by a decrease in contemporary
historical research. There are, however, short works
covering the
period from 1930 to the present: Raúl Jacob's El
Uruguay de
Terra, 1931-1938; Ana Frega, Mónica Maronna, and
Yvette
Trochon's Baldomir y la restauración democrática,
1938-1946; Germán D'Elía's El Uruguay
neo-Batllista,
1946-1958; Rosa Alonso Eloy and Carlos Demassi's
Uruguay,
1958-1968; Oscar Bruschera's Las décadas infames,
1967-1985; and Gerardo Caetano and José Pedro Rilla's
Breve historia de la dictadura, 1973-1985. An
excellent
economic history of Uruguay is M.H.J. Finch's A
Political
Economy of Uruguay since 1870. Useful English-language
sources on contemporary Uruguay include Martin Weinstein's
Uruguay: The Politics of Failure and Uruguay:
Democracy
at the Crossroads. Although somewhat dated, Marvin
Alisky's
Uruguay: A Contemporary Survey and Russell H.
Fitzgibbon's
Uruguay: Portrait of a Democracy also contain
useful
background information. (For further information and
complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1990
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