Raul Bassi
On October 31, Uruguayans will go to the polls to elect a new president. According to opinion polls, Tabare Vazquez of the centre-left Encuentro Progresista-Frente Amplio-Nueva Mayoria (Progressive Meeting-Broad Front-New Majority) bloc is the leading candidate with 54% of vote intentions.
Vazquez's nearest rival is National Party candidate Jorge Larranaga, who is scoring 30% in the most recent opinion polls. The ruling conservative Colorado party candidate, Guillermo Stirling, is coming a distant third with a mere 9% in opinion polls.
Vazquez needs 50% of all votes plus one to become president in the first round. Otherwise there will be a run-off on the last Sunday of November between the two presidential candidates with the highest first-round votes. Voting is compulsory in Uruguay.
However, that Vazquez will become Uruguay's next president is widely accepted — not only by activists in the trade unions and student organisations and inhabitants of poorer neighbourhoods, but also by the bosses' organisations, the corporate press and the International Monetary Fund.
Vazquez's Frente Amplio (FA) bloc consists of the traditional reformist left (including the Communist Party), the former Tupamaros urban guerrillas and other left-wing groups. It has the support of the trade unions and the other social movements.
Vazquez, a former mayor of Montevideo, fell short of the 50% plus one vote required to win in the first round of the last presidential election in 1999. The National and Colorado parties, which have alternately ruled Uruguay throughout its history, joined forces to ensure that the current president, Jorge Batlle, was elected.
Crisis
In 1999 the Uruguayan economy went into recession. Then in 2002, Uruguay was hit by a banking crisis when neighbouring Argentina — to whose economy Uruguay is inextricably tied — experienced an economic meltdown.
In Uruguay, wages, exports and international reserves plunged, the financial system collapsed, and unemployment soared to 17% (today it is officially 14%), the highest rate since 1985. The proportion of the country's 4.3 million inhabitants who were living under the poverty line doubled to 24%. Per capita GDP declined from US$6800 in 1998 to about $3300 in 2003.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund, 46.6% of children under six — 104,000 children — were living in poor households in 2002.
Unlike Argentina, however, in Uruguay the economic crisis did not produce a political crisis. Believing that the FA "cannot reach government in a situation of instability", the FA's MPs did as much as they could to insulate the political system — and the corporate elite that rules it — from the popular anger at the government's handling of the economic crisis.
In April 2002, the PIT-CNT, the country's only union confederation, organised a mass demonstration against the government with the participation of bosses' associations, including the big producers of wool, beef, rice and milk.
On July 31, the PIT-CNT called a 24-hour general strike to protest the Colorado government's neoliberal economic measures. The strike had wide support from public workers, bank workers, teachers, health workers and industrial workers.
At the time, Vazquez declared that "the next election will be decided between those who support chaos and those who support order. The government and its allies support chaos; we support order in a country with jobs, social justice, with a serious plan to be taken forward. We do not promote social explosions".
Electoral politics
A major reason that Uruguay has not seen the same scale of protests as other Latin American countries is the domination of electoral politics over mass action in the country. In the late 1960s, an economic deterioration in the country led to the growth of significant social movements, resulting in the formation of the militant Tupamaro National Liberation Movement. In the 1971 elections, a united-left Frente Amplio ticket achieved a large left vote for the first time in the country. However, in 1973, a dictatorship was set up that lasted until 1981.
Since 1981, all Uruguay's political parties — from the left to the right — have accepted that electoral majorities legitimise government, that political parties are the only way to participate in politics and that democracy should be representative, not participatory.
While the FA was formed out of social struggle, its acceptance of this framework means that its new growth in influence comes from its willingness to help preserve "stability".
This is not surprising: there has been no recent history of rebellion in the Uruguayan working class, no insurrections or challenge to the dominant class — even for short periods, no active opposition to the repressive apparatus, nor to the traditional political parties. It is no wonder that the left and the unions are always looking to preserve consensus and resolve problems through government institutions.
What type of government could we expect from an FA victory?
There are currently two types of progressive governments in Latin America, resulting from two different types of situation. One emerges from deep political, social and economic crisis — such as in Venezuela or Argentina; and the other type emerges in "stable" countries, where the left has been building electoral power for a long time through broad alliances, such as in Brazil and Chile. There is no doubt that an FA government would be of the second type, which has proved more limited as the desire to preserve the alliances and "stability" becomes paramount.
This is not to say that nothing will change under an FA government. To start with, a defeat of the right-wing government will be a big hit to the country's traditional bipartisan system. Imagine leaders of the Tupameros who endured long years in jail, in ministerial positions! Socialist, communists and unionists could be in executive positions in government.
However, many of the most progressive elements of the original program of the FA — agrarian reform, nationalisation of the banks, a monopoly on external commerce and refusal to pay external debt — have been deleted.
Even FA Senator Jose Mujica, an historic leader of the Tupamaros, was reported in the October 22 Miami Herald as saying, "We are not big enough to challenge the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. The relationship between Uruguay and the fund is good, and we intend to keep it that way."
The FA's remaining progressive proposals are: a "plan of social emergency", attempts to restart economic growth through building hosing, and increased investment in health and education (for which there is no concrete proposal).
The left organisations in FA are describing this program as "reformism without reforms", because the FA is not taking any steps to reverse the privatisation of the economy.
Originally, rank-and-file committees called Comites de Base were the spine of the FA. They were widespread all around the work places, neighbourhoods, universities and intellectual circles. From there, all the propaganda and agitation took place. They enabled participatory democracy in the organisation. Now, however, the parliamentary wing of the FA has replaced all of that. It now takes the political decisions and handles the appointment of FA officials. There are no places in the FA to involve youth active in the social movements, rank-and-file union activists, or women struggling for liberation.
The future of Uruguay is tied to changing the political culture that supports "elitist democracy". This could only happen in a long period of instability.
Twenty per cent of the population has emigrated, poverty has hit hard — particularly on women and children, the family institution is in crisis, the health and education systems have collapsed and tinequality is rampant. The poor could forge a new road, if they could develop new forms of organisation. It was impossible until now. It would be a paradox if this happened under a left government, but we should not forget that Uruguay is part of one the most explosive areas in the world. Changes in the neighbourhood might result in some big changes in the "Switzerland of Latin America".
From Green Left Weekly, October 27, 2004.
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