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Political Polarisation in Uruguay in the Early 1960s: The Role of Luis Batlle Berres and Lista 15

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2023

Felipe Monestier Open the ORCID record for Felipe Monestier [Opens in a new window]
Felipe Monestier*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Ciencia Política, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
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Email: felipe.monestier@cienciassociales.edu.uy
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Abstract

The historiography on Uruguay during the Cold War has identified the period 1959–62 as a key juncture in the process of political polarisation that culminated in the fall of democracy in 1973. Based on the analysis of press articles and other documentary sources, I describe the role played by the main fraction of the Partido Colorado (Red Party) led by Luis Batlle Berres in promoting polarisation of the Uruguayan political system in those years. My findings contradict the conventional depiction of Batlle Berres as a moderate who tried to prevent the polarisation provoked by other agents.

Polarización política en uruguay a principios de los años 1960: el rol de luis batlle berres y lista 15

Polarización política en Uruguay a principios de los años 1960: El rol de Luis Batlle Berres y Lista 15

La historiografía sobre el Uruguay durante la Guerra Fría ha identificado el período 1959–62 como una coyuntura clave en el proceso de polarización política que culminó en la caída de la democracia en 1973. En base al análisis de prensa y otras fuentes documentales el artículo muestra el rol de la principal fracción del Partido Colorado liderada por Luis Batlle Berres en la dinámica general de polarización de sistema político uruguayo de esos años. La evidencia presentada contradice las referencias que le consideraban un actor moderado que intentó impedir la polarización provocada por otros agentes.

Polarização política no uruguai no início dos anos 1960: o papel de luis batlle berres e lista 15

Polarização política no Uruguai no início dos anos 1960: O papel de Luis Batlle Berres e Lista 15

A historiografia do Uruguai durante a Guerra Fria identificou o período de 1959–62 como uma conjuntura chave no processo de polarização política que culminou na queda da democracia em 1973. A partir da análise da imprensa e de outras fontes documentais, o artigo mostra o papel da principal fração do Partido Colorado liderada por Luis Batlle Berres na dinâmica geral de polarização do sistema político uruguaio daqueles anos. As evidências apresentadas contradizem as referências que o consideravam um ator moderado que tentava impedir a polarização causada por outros agentes.

Keywords

UruguayCold WarpolarisationLuis Batlle BerresLista 15UruguayGuerra FríapolarizaciónLuis Batlle BerresLista 15UruguaiGuerra FriaPolarizaçãoLuis Batlle BerresLista 15

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Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , November 2023 , pp. 579 - 598
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Introduction

On an April evening in 1962, a politician speaks to an audience in a middle-class neighbourhood in Montevideo. It is the beginning of the campaign for the national elections to be held in November. The Partido Nacional (National Party, PN) is running for re-election, and the Partido Colorado (Red Party, PC) is seeking to regain government, lost in the previous election.Footnote 1 Neighbourhood political events are a routine feature of Uruguay's democracy, which has been functioning uninterruptedly for two decades and seems immune to the effects that the Cold War is having on other parts of Latin America.Footnote 2 The stability of Uruguay's two-party democracy contrasts with the polarisation, institutional crises and authoritarianism increasingly occurring on the continent. However, at this neighbourhood event in April 1962, the evening's keynote speaker begins listing serious threats to Uruguayan democracy. As he goes on, the speech oscillates between ironic comments on his political adversaries and high drama. In his words, the upcoming elections represent a historic crossroads for the country. Towards the end of his speech he reviews Uruguay's main achievements, mentioning the value of free education at all levels. He stresses the importance of these achievements and what it means to achieve them in a democracy. Finally, the speech takes a surprising and sombre turn. The November elections are presented as a weapon to be wielded. The speaker presents the options starkly: ‘The gains we have achieved must be defended today with the vote if we do not want to have to defend them tomorrow with the gun.’Footnote 3

The speaker was former President Luis Batlle Berres, leader of the PC's majority fractionFootnote 4 and the opposition's main political force.Footnote 5 His speech can be seen as an indicator of the political polarisation that existed in Uruguay in 1962, a phenomenon repeatedly mentioned in the literature on the long ‘democratic road to authoritarianism’Footnote 6 that the country travelled until the coup d’état of 27 June 1973. At the same time, the content and tone of Batlle Berres’ speech are striking because they do not conform to the conventionally established image of the role that he and Lista 15 played in the cycle of political polarisation in Uruguay in the early 1960s. (For electoral purposes, fractions number their candidate lists. The fraction led by Luis Batlle Berres within the PC was Lista 15. See Figure 1.)

Figure 1.

‘Lista 15’, 1958 elections

Note: Originally printed in red ink.

Source: Corte Electoral del Uruguay, Montevideo.

Research on the process that led to the fall of Uruguay's democracy has emphasised the importance of the political change that occurred in the wake of the 1958 election. In that election, Uruguay had its first experience of a democratic change in government, when the PC was defeated by an alliance of right-wing groups led by the Herrerista fraction of the PN.Footnote 7

A study of this period, which includes two PN governments (1959–62 and 1963–7), has identified an increase in political polarisation as one of its main characteristics.Footnote 8 This phenomenon is attributed to the strategies deployed by various political actors who resorted to rhetoric and behaviour that prioritised confrontation over cooperation and framed political competition in terms of antagonistic rivalry.

Despite advances in our knowledge concerning Uruguayan politics in the early 1960s, there remain some striking gaps. One concerns the actions of Batlle Berres and Lista 15 during that period. This lacuna is surprising, given the importance of these actors in the Uruguayan party system from the mid-1940s. Lista 15, led by Batlle Berres, was the majority fraction of the PC governments from 1951 to 1958 and of the opposition from 1959 to 1967. It was, therefore, a political actor with enormous power and a central place in the political system of the early 1960s. In this paper, I seek to fill this important gap in our understanding of the process of political polarisation that Uruguay experienced in the early 1960s by focusing on an important actor who has hitherto received little attention.

This paper further contributes to the literature by challenging conventional depictions of the role Batlle Berres and his fraction played in the early 1960s. These depictions present them as agents occupying the centre of the ideological space of an increasingly polarised party system, unsuccessfully trying to counter the centrifugal tendencies provoked by actors located to their left and right.Footnote 9 The editorials in the daily newspaper Acción Footnote 10 – Lista 15's leading media outlet – and other documentary sources presented in this paper give the lie to this depiction. On the contrary, they show that, in the early 1960s, the fraction led by Batlle Berres used polarisation-oriented rhetoric, especially against the government and the PN. The evidence suggests that Batlle Berres, far from promoting moderation and consensus, instead confronted the government using rhetoric that framed political competition in terms of dramatic and irreconcilable difference.

The organisation of the paper is as follows. The first section briefly reviews the history and political science literature analysing the process that culminated in the fall of Uruguay's democracy in 1973 and explains the gaps in our knowledge that the paper aims to fill. The second section introduces Batlle Berres and Lista 15 and reviews their performance between 1947 and 1958. The third section describes the political change and polarisation after the PN came to power in 1959. The fourth section presents an analysis of the rhetoric used by Batlle Berres and his fraction to oppose the PN government between 1959 and 1963. The paper closes with a summary of its main contributions and suggests avenues for future research.

Research on Political Polarisation in Pre-Authoritarian Uruguay

This article is a case study focused on the actions of a fraction of the PC led by Batlle Berres during the period that began in March 1959 with the electoral victory of the PN and ended in November 1962 with the elections that resulted in victory for that party. Through an in-depth study of the rhetoric of this political actor at that specific period, the paper helps fill a gap in our understanding of the links between Uruguayan politics in the early 1960s and the fall of democracy in 1973.

Historical and political science studies of the crisis of Uruguayan democracy proliferated from the mid-1980s onwards during the transition to democracy.Footnote 11 These studies, some of which were strongly influenced, theoretically and conceptually, by institutionalism, paid particular attention to the interaction between institutional rules and political actors and how the polarisation of the latter contributed to the blockage of the system, the eruption of political violence and the collapse of democracy.Footnote 12

Polarisation refers to the ideological distance between agents in a system. Increasing polarisation results from competition, which can incite agents to abandon centrist positions in the left–right ideological space.Footnote 13 The presence of actors with antagonistic and irreconcilable positions and the hollowing out of the ideological centre increases conflict and the likelihood of political violence.Footnote 14 In terms of causality, prior studies of the fall of Uruguayan democracy considered extreme polarisation a factor that reduced the chances of cooperation, increased the probability of political obstruction, stimulated the emergence of anti-democratic behaviour and contributed to the general loss of legitimacy of democratic actors and institutions.Footnote 15

The Uruguay of 1968–73 was recognised – even by contemporaries – as prone to extreme political polarisation and violence. Hence, much of the literature considers that period as the juncture during which Uruguayan democracy – one of the longest-lived and best established in Latin America – went into crisis and became another of the authoritarian regimes brought about by the Cold War.Footnote 16 The extreme violence of those five years has resulted in biased research focused on the main events and actors of that period.Footnote 17

This bias was partially corrected during the first decades of this century by new studies of Uruguay's recent past, which helped advance knowledge of the processes and actors linking the terminal phase of the crisis of Uruguayan democracy and the early years of the Cold War.Footnote 18 This research, which broadened the range of problems and actors considered and filled gaps in our knowledge about the period, has paid particular attention to the irruption of anti-communist ideas, agents and practices in Uruguay during the Cold War.Footnote 19 A growing body of scholarship has investigated the main actors in the PN governments of 1959–67, their links with right-wing and extreme right-wing nationalist groups, and their anti-communist rhetoric.Footnote 20 In addition, recent academic work has studied the ideas and practices of the Uruguayan Socialist and Communist parties during the second half of the 1950s and the early 1960s, and the impact of the Cuban Revolution on these parties.Footnote 21 Research has also been published on left-wing revolutionary armed movementsFootnote 22 and on the links between the Uruguayan state and various US government agencies from the beginning of the Cold War.Footnote 23

Despite these advances, there remain critical gaps in the study of Uruguay in the early 1960s and of the links between the politics of those years and the process that culminated in the fall of democracy. There is a particularly striking absence of research on the role played by certain parties, fractions and social organisations that were highly significant in terms of their electoral weight, the positions they occupied in government and the opposition, their capacity to mobilise support among their base, and their potential to influence public opinion.

The importance that historiography and political science have attributed to the role Batlle Berres and his fraction played in Uruguayan politics contrasts with the absence of studies regarding some specific dimensions of their performance. In particular, there is a notable need for more research on the role that Lista 15 played in political polarisation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when it went from being the main fraction of the government to the majority fraction of the opposition.

This gap in the literature contrasts with research on other stages of Lista 15's performance, such as studies of the governments of 1947–59, when Batlle Berres and his fraction promoted a reformist agenda that espoused a development model based on import substitution and the expansion of the welfare state.Footnote 24 Similarly, other research has analysed the interaction of Lista 15 with the conservative fractions of the PC, which, from the mid-1940s, had opposed its reform programme.Footnote 25 Finally, there is an increasing number of studies on the course taken by Lista 15 after Batlle Berres’ death in 1964, such as the surprising ideological shift that led his son, Jorge Batlle Ibáñez, to espouse economic neoliberalism.Footnote 26

Only a few of these studies include references to Lista 15 in the early 1960s; they tend to minimise Lista 15's role in the process of polarisation during that period, instead highlighting the ‘exhaustion’ of the development model it had promoted when it was in government and its loss of capacity to represent the interests of the citizenry. These interpretations maintain that it was mainly other political actors on the Right and Left who intensified ‘the game of centrifugal attacks, resistance and opposition’ from 1959 onwards.Footnote 27 On the contrary, Batlle Berres and his fraction appear as (ineffective) promoters of equilibrium,Footnote 28 as actors who unsuccessfully insisted on a strategy that, ‘far from being divisive, was consensus-building’.Footnote 29

These interpretations assume that the behaviour and rhetoric of Lista 15 were not affected by the polarisation strategy promoted by the other actors in the system, including the government, during the early 1960s. At the same time, they lessen the role played by Lista 15. This is a problematic position to sustain given that the fraction controlled the major opposition bench in Parliament and was the dominant minority in the Colegiado (collegiate executive branch)Footnote 30 and in other state institutions, including oversight boardsFootnote 31 and public enterprises. As if this were not enough, Batlle Berres controlled two mass media outlets, the evening newspaper Acción and the radio station Ariel, which allowed him to disseminate his views on major national and international issues. Finally, Lista 15 was a vigorous organisation active throughout the country via a network of party offices (‘clubs’) that facilitated joint action and clientelism.Footnote 32

Cold War and Democracy in Neobatllista Uruguay

Between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, several Latin American countries, including Uruguay, established electoral democracies that allowed leaders, parties and movements with broad popular support to come to power. These governments put forward reforms that broadened citizenship, strengthened workers’ organisations, promoted welfare and fostered development plans based on industrialisation.Footnote 33

Uruguay's democratic governments of the 1940s took advantage of the growth in international demand for agricultural products to finance the expansion of welfare policies, promote industrialisation and increase state interventionism in the economy. These policies were strengthened in 1947 with Batlle Berres’ assumption of the presidency.Footnote 34

Batlle Berres’ programme had similarities with some of the Latin American populist movements of the period. However, unlike these movements, Batlle Berres did not call for a radical break from the past. On the contrary, he claimed to be a continuation of the reformist governments of Batlle y Ordóñez in the first decades of the twentieth century. For this reason, Batlle Berres rejected the notion of class struggle. He promoted an alliance between the state, workers and capitalists to create a broad middle class to ensure political stability. Similarly, his governments and Lista 15 maintained a strategy of ‘negotiation and support [seeking] to benefit the poor without harming the rich’.Footnote 35 This policy was maintained despite significant tension with rural producers, who opposed industrialisation and the expansion of the welfare state. Batlle Berres and his fraction thus sought to avoid the polarisation of political space that characterised most populist movements.Footnote 36

The need for parliamentary majorities led Batlle Berres to act pragmatically and make specific agreements with ideologically heterogeneous actors. In some cases, allied with left-wing parties, he promoted public policies that broadened state intervention and espoused a concept of democracy that advanced individual freedoms, economic development and social welfare. Such agreements can be seen as expressions of the ideological climate that prevailed before the onset of the Cold War, when progressive governments and Centre–Left alliances promoted similar policies in the United States and Europe.Footnote 37 In the case of Uruguay, these agreements gave rise to policies such as that which in 1943 established collective wage bargaining, stimulating massive unionisation of workers and strengthening their organisations.Footnote 38

At the same time, when circumstances required it, Batlle Berres made pacts with actors on the ideological Right. For example, in 1948, he signed an agreement with Luis Alberto de Herrera, leader of the opposition and of the most conservative fraction of the PN, and one of his main political adversaries.Footnote 39

Despite its political stability, Uruguay was not immune to the effects of the Cold War. From the late 1940s onward, the communism vs. anti-communism schism became increasingly prominent in political life and markedly more acute in the mid-1950s, when the Uruguayan economy entered a prolonged cycle of economic stagnation and recession.Footnote 40

The accompanying fall in international export prices hurt the Uruguayan economy, intensifying the struggle over the distribution of resources. Rising inflation and unemployment led to discontent among broad sectors of the population, manifested in significant trade union unrest.Footnote 41 In 1958, public unrest led to profound political change.

Cold War and Polarisation in Uruguay between 1959 and 1963

The PN won in the November 1958 presidential elections. This event marked the first experience of a change in the party of government since the birth of Uruguayan democracy.Footnote 42 On 1 March 1959, the new government took office: it comprised a conservative alliance of the Herrerista fraction of the PN with the Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista (Federal Rural Action League), an association of agricultural producers established in the early 1950s under the leadership of Benito Nardone.Footnote 43

The new government brought significant changes in political competition and economic policy. Politically, the government adopted the logic of anti-communist polarisation that characterised the Cold War.Footnote 44 On the economic front, it sought to break with the statist paradigm and to apply a liberal-oriented model that favoured market deregulation.

Anti-communist and anti-leftist discourse was not new in Uruguayan politics. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Herrerismo and other conservative groups rejected the radical reformism promoted by Batlle y Ordóñez, accusing him of socialist, communist, and even anarchist leanings.Footnote 45 These groups used the same rhetoric to justify the 1933 coup d’état.Footnote 46 In the early 1950s, Nardone joined the chorus of actors using Cold War anti-communist rhetoric, criticising industrialisation, collective wage bargaining and unemployment insurance as ‘communist ideas’ created in order to ‘end private property’.Footnote 47 Against this background, the change in government in 1959 was politically significant. The governing alliance suspected leftist protesters, left-wing parties and even Batlle Berres and Lista 15 of being agents of communism.Footnote 48

On the economic front, the PN government's reforms progressed with difficulties and contradictions. However, the government approved an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that involved devaluing the peso and other measures leading to income redistribution favouring agricultural exporters.Footnote 49 This was resisted by the opposition parties and the unions, which mobilised against economic deregulation and in defence of labour rights won during economic expansion and the Batllista governments.Footnote 50 The government attributed social protest to the communist threat and characterised workers’ rallies – especially on the part of state employees – as criminal activities in service of an ‘external’ enemy.Footnote 51

In this context, the Cuban Revolution intensified polarisation, especially since the revolutionaries made explicit their Marxist–Leninist character and their alignment with the Soviet Union. Support in Uruguay for and against Fidel Castro's leadership multiplied. The Uruguayan workers’ and students’ movements transformed their slogans, demands and methods of struggle, orienting themselves more and more explicitly toward structural objectives that implied putting an end to ‘the oligarchy, imperialism and capitalism represented by the traditional governments and parties’.Footnote 52

In addition to using polarisation-oriented rhetoric, the new government tried to limit the political and civil rights of those actors it considered part of the communist threat.Footnote 53 When these attempts failed, it sought to use existing tools, such as the Medidas Prontas de Seguridad (Emergency Security Measures, MPS), to suppress dissent, and especially to crush the demonstrations and strikes carried out by state workers.Footnote 54 The new government also strengthened its repressive apparatus through a policy of close and long-term cooperation with the US government, including investment in arms and other technologies and in the state intelligence services.Footnote 55

The situation deteriorated even further due to the actions of extreme right-wing nationalist organisations that carried out violent attacks against people and institutions linked to the Left and to the Jewish community.Footnote 56 In 1961, Professor Arbelio Ramírez was fatally shot as he left a lecture delivered by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara at the University of the Republic.Footnote 57 However, it was in 1962, amid the turmoil of the electoral campaign, that there was a significant increase in the level of violence and number of attacks on people, unions and party headquarters. In July, the country was shocked by the kidnapping of and assault on the young Paraguayan exile Soledad Barrett, whose attackers carved the shapes of swastikas into her legs.Footnote 58 In September, less than three months before the elections, a Molotov cocktail attack on a Communist Party office caused the death of a five-month-old child.Footnote 59 These episodes of political violence indicated that polarisation was beginning to move beyond the level of discourse.

The Role Played by Batlle Berres and Lista 15 between 1959 and 1963

Between 1959 and 1963, Lista 15, led by Batlle Berres, was the majority fraction of the main opposition party. Analysis of the rhetoric he used during that period does not show him to be an actor who tried to develop a strategy of moderation and consensus between polarised political adversaries. On the contrary, Batlle Berres and his supporters appear to have deployed polarisation rhetoric with respect to their political adversaries, especially toward the government and the entire PN.

The editorial pages of the evening daily Acción played an essential role in that polarisation strategy. The newspaper had been founded by Batlle Berres in 1948 to provide his party with its own media outlet, as was common with most political parties in Uruguay at the time.Footnote 60 Its editorial page was written daily by Batlle Berres himself, his son and political heir Jorge Batlle Ibáñez, and the main leaders of Lista 15. The contents of the newspaper's editorial section articulated the positions of the fraction on the main national and international issues of the day. The newspaper enabled party and sector leaders to communicate their views daily to tens of thousands of households.Footnote 61 In addition, Batlle Berres owned the Ariel radio station, whose coverage included the city of Montevideo and some departments near the capital. The station had less of a political profile than Acción, and its programming was dominated by news and entertainment. However, it also included political opinion voiced by some of the prominent leaders of Lista 15. Finally, the electoral weight of the fraction ensured that the pronouncements of Batlle Berres and his group on all important public issues were widely covered by the media.

Between 1959 and 1963, the fraction led by Batlle Berres used all these resources to spread a rhetoric of polarisation against the government. Officialdom, the right-wing fractions of the traditional parties, radical right-wing groups and left-wing parties all adopted polarisation strategies, and Lista 15 behaved similarly.

An analysis of the discourse of the fraction led by Batlle Berres shows its polarisation vis-à-vis the government in at least three principal dimensions: 1) by presenting their opposition to the government as a confrontation between democracy and fascism; 2) by presenting the government's handling of social unrest as an irreconcilable choice between dialogue and repression; and 3) by presenting Batlle Berres as representative of the citizenry as a whole against a government that represented the interests of a self-seeking oligarchy.

Polarisation as Opposition to ‘Fascism’

Lista 15 developed a systematic campaign presenting prominent figures of the governing party as ‘Nazis’, ‘Fascists’ or ‘Falangists’.Footnote 62 These epithets had been employed previously in Uruguayan politics.Footnote 63 However, since the end of World War II, they had never appeared with the frequency and intensity observed in 1962.Footnote 64

In November, a few weeks before the elections, an unsigned note in Acción claimed that five of the six candidates for the Colegiado of one of the main fractions of the PN had ‘sung the praises’ of Franco, Mussolini, Hitler and their regimes.Footnote 65 The accusations were also directed against specific government figures. Acción claimed that Carlos María Penadés, one of the ruling party's candidates for the Colegiado, and his group were ‘all Nazi-fascists’. The same accusation was constantly hurled at Eduardo Víctor Haedo, one of the main leaders of the PN and President of the Colegiado between 1961 and 1962. According to Acción, during World War II leaders of the PN itself had accused Haedo of being a ‘Nazi spy, in the pay of Germany’.Footnote 66

This rhetoric was also used by the leading spokesmen of Lista 15 in public protests. Legendary senator Alba Roballo condemned the government for encouraging ‘Nazi-fascist ideals for the republic’.Footnote 67 One of the candidates for the Colegiado warned that if the ruling party won re-election, it would give free rein to ‘its true Nazi-fascist, antisocial and destructive inclinations’, and lead the country ‘into the immense abyss that constitutes the essence of its ideology’.Footnote 68

These accusations were not based exclusively on the positions that some leaders and fractions of the PN had assumed in the face of the rise of extreme right-wing European regimes or during the confrontation between the Axis powers and the Allies. The recurrent use of rhetoric emphasising the threat of fascism was linked to the appearance in Uruguay of some violent, extreme right-wing groups between 1959 and 1962. Faced with the actions of these groups, Lista 15 accused the government of maintaining attitudes of ‘instigation’, ‘tolerance’, ‘complicit passivity’ and ‘impunity’ towards right-wing extremists.Footnote 69 Dozens of articles in Acción reported on the most significant attacks, including some which were not claimed by extreme right-wing groups.

In response to an attempted storming and occupation of the Universidad de la República by one of the extreme right-wing groups of the time, Acción claimed that the police and pro-government legislators had been complicit in the assault. The report stated that members of the armed right-wing extremist group had been transported to the University in police trucks, and it criticised the government for its reluctance to investigate these events.Footnote 70 According to a previous article, the government and extreme right-wing groups had plunged the country into a climate of ‘national insecurity’ and had unleashed ‘violence in the streets, in the face of police passivity and tolerance’.Footnote 71

Events such as the shooting of Professor Ramírez, the kidnapping and assault of Barrett and the death of a child due to a bomb attack on a Communist Party office received extensive coverage in the newspaper, which mentioned them dozens of times. Even cases of violence whose perpetrators were never identified were blamed on extreme right-wing groups and attributed to the alleged fascist inclinations of the government. Despite uncertainty regarding the perpetrators, those who wrote the editorials in Acción stated that a vote for the government was a ‘cheer for the murderers, for those who covered them up, for those who went to the trouble of guarding their anonymity’.Footnote 72

For all these reasons, the leaders of Lista 15 maintained that a victory for the ruling party in the 1962 elections would ‘lead [only] to fascism and social chaos’.Footnote 73 They claimed that the government threatened the ‘constitution and the law’ and ‘the full exercise of individual liberties’.Footnote 74 In the words of the young parliamentary candidate Julio María Sanguinetti,Footnote 75 these dangers could be countered only if the citizenry put the sole party with an authentic liberal tradition, the PC, back in power.Footnote 76

Polarisation as Opposition to a ‘Repressive’ Government

The rhetoric of polarisation used by Batlle Berres and his fraction in opposition to the government is seen in their repeated denunciations of the intensity and frequency with which the government used violence to control growing social unrest. In the view of Acción, the government had used repression as a first and only recourse in the face of the legitimate demands of workers and students. They argued that in the 1962 elections individual liberties would be at stake, threatened by a government that practised ‘union bashing, bringing the army and tanks on to the streets’, endangering ‘institutional stability and social tranquillity’.Footnote 77

Acción's polarised rhetoric was extreme when government repression was directed against teachers and academics in the country's public education system.Footnote 78 The leaders of Lista 15 alleged that the government was acting with intransigence and promoting an unjustifiable witch hunt against them, treating them as if they were ‘subversives’ in receipt of ‘orders from Prague’ or promoters of ‘who knows what tremendous guerrilla war’.Footnote 79 For Batlle Berres and his fraction, the alleged fight against communism and its influence on education were only pretexts used to encourage ‘public contempt’ of public education and to ‘threaten’ and ‘attack’ educators when they rallied to demand decent salaries.Footnote 80

A few days before the 1962 elections, an editorial in Acción included a photograph in which two policemen could be seen beating a man lying in the middle of the street. The text accompanying the image described the man as ‘an unemployed construction worker who has no job, who is simply protesting in the face of … governmental indifference’.Footnote 81 The text concluded by reinforcing the unbridgeable gap that separated Lista 15 from the ruling party and stated that, in order to vote for the latter, one had to trust ‘the uniformed men who beat [people] on the ground’, ‘forget the truncheons’ and be ‘a masochist’ and ‘a twisted soul’.Footnote 82

The same criticism was levelled at the suppression of student demonstrations in support of the Cuban Revolution. Although Batlle Berres and Lista 15 were critical of the Cuban regime, they systematically criticised police actions that put down demonstrations of support. They argued that the government's measures against such demonstrations were disproportionate and revealed its will to impose order using ‘bludgeoning tactics’ practised in operations in which there were usually ‘more police than demonstrators’ and which could have been avoided ‘with a minimum of sanity and common sense’.Footnote 83

As if all this were not enough, Batlle Berres and his group held the government responsible for the systematic use of torture on detainees in police establishments throughout the country. In July 1962, Lista 15 Deputy Luis Riñón Perrett alleged in Parliament that ‘in the last three years’ there had been a proliferation in the country of ‘reprehensible and cowardly forms of repression’ and incidents of torture and punishment that had caused severe injuries and even deaths.Footnote 84 In the same vein, the day before the elections, the editorial page of Acción included a photograph of an electric prod. The article listed dozens of episodes between 1959 and 1962 in which the government was accused of using violence illegally and practising various forms of torture including ‘caballete,Footnote 85 electric prod, beatings’ and that, in some cases, these practices had led to the death of detainees whose bodies displayed ‘signs of terrible injuries’.Footnote 86

Lista 15 leaders argued that government repression could lead to the sole conclusion that, in the 1962 elections, Uruguayans would have to choose between two mutually exclusive models of the country: the government's ‘police state’ and ‘police repression’ or the restoration of the ‘climate of freedom’ and ‘dialogue with the people as a group’ represented by Lista 15. According to the latter, the country was at a historical juncture in which the people ‘could have no room for doubt’.Footnote 87

Polarisation as Opposition to the ‘Oligarchy’

The oligarchy–people dichotomy was also part of the discursive strategy of Lista 15. The government was systematically accused of representing the oligarchy's interests and turning its back on the demands and needs of the population.

Although, as noted above, Batlle Berres and his fraction – in their role of inheritors of the reformism of the Batlle y Ordóñez governments – rejected the idea of class struggle, they recognised the existence of distributive conflict. From their perspective, it was the responsibility of the state to intervene to prevent these conflicts from compromising the system's stability.Footnote 88 They argued that the PN's ‘aristocratic’ and ‘oligarchic’ government had intensified social conflict, and the violence with which it repressed the working-class movement resulted from the leaders of the government identifying with the economic elite. In the view of Acción, the government preached ‘austerity for the lower classes’ and ‘the big stick’ to contain workers’ protests, being ‘very hard on those at the bottom’ and ‘very soft on those at the top’.Footnote 89 In 1962, when landowners’ organisations threatened to stop paying taxes, the newspaper's editorials accused the government of acting with excessive ‘consideration’, ‘contemplation’ and ‘moderation’, as if the upper classes were the only ones with ‘the right to use coercion’ and to ‘adopt the most intransigent positions when it comes to defending their interests’.Footnote 90

In the words of Senator Roballo, the rulers were ‘puppets’ of the ‘privileged’ sectors, and their policies had made the salaried workers ‘four times poorer’ and ‘made the rich four times richer’.Footnote 91 In her view, the elections posed an irreconcilable conflict between the return of Batllismo and a development model based on industrialisation and welfare policies, and the re-election of a government that represented a return to ‘colonial monoculture’, the deepening of ‘class differences’ and an ‘inflationary orgy for the feudal and financial oligarchies’.Footnote 92

Batlle Berres and his fraction argued that the government could not understand workers’ demands because it had a complete lack of knowledge about their world and the roots of their ‘solidarity’.Footnote 93 Furthermore, Acción editorials attributed to the leaders of the government and the PN as a whole a great deal of prejudice toward poor people, prejudices which often had racist (the poor were identified as ‘Blacks’), political (the protesting poor were ‘communists’) and moral (the poor were poor because they ‘did not want to work’) components. For Lista 15 Batllistas, the government was a group of ‘aristocrats’ who felt ‘contempt for everyone’.Footnote 94

In the rhetoric of polarisation put forward by the main opposition force, the elitism of an oligarchic government was being translated into policies that sought to dismantle the welfare state built by the Batllista governments. From this perspective, the social policies that had made Uruguay exceptional in the Latin American context were being ‘abolished by reaction’ and replaced by ‘retrograde provisions’, turning into ‘opprobrium’ what had been ‘a source of pride’.Footnote 95 The opposition argued that social rights were being replaced by ‘alms’, reflecting the philosophy ‘of all oligarchies when they want to pay for their responsibilities with the baleful small change of charity’.Footnote 96

Thus, the government's policies – and not the structural economic crisis – were presented as the main causes of the deterioration of Uruguay's social situation. According to Acción, these policies would put an end to Uruguay's exceptional nature. Uruguayan society, they argued, increasingly resembled that of the rest of Latin America, where the ‘misery and desolation’ of most of the population contrasted with the privileges of the ‘landed and bourgeois oligarchies’.Footnote 97

In this rhetoric, Batllismo was presented as the guardian of the alleged Uruguayan exceptionalism, and the government was merely one of the ‘nefarious, reactionary and surrendered governments’ that abounded in the rest of Latin America, one of the governments that condemned the population to choose ‘between bread that they obtain as alms and a truth that, when it tries to emerge, is fiercely repressed’.Footnote 98 It was in this context that Batlle Berres voiced the urgent need to return to government in order to defend a welfare state built ‘without firing a single shot, without spilling a drop of blood’. According to him, that model of the country had to be defended through the vote to avoid having to defend it in the future through violence.Footnote 99

Conclusions

Between 1958 and 1962, Uruguayan political competition became polarised. Previous studies have shown the contribution many political actors made to this process. However, to date there has been little analysis of the role played during that period by the main opposition fraction: Batlle Berres’ Batllismo.

Some prior studies of the period depict the group led by Batlle Berres as having played a secondary role between 1959 and 1962, despite its enormous power. According to this view, Batlle Berres and his fraction failed to restrain polarisation and promote consensus in a situation in which all other political actors were prioritising confrontation.

The present work corrects this distorted image of the role played Batlle Berres and his fraction. Far from promoting moderation, the main opposition force adopted the rhetoric of polarisation and irreconcilable difference. The editorial pages of Acción, Batlle Berres’ speeches and other leaders of Lista 15 presented the 1962 elections as a choice between fascism and democracy, repression and dialogue, oligarchy and the people. In the pages of Acción and campaign speeches, important distinctions between the main fractions and leaders of the PN were blurred. For Batlle Berres, Uruguay stood at a crossroads in the 1962 elections where it would have to choose between ‘immense hope or definitive destruction’.Footnote 100

The evidence presented shows that the rhetoric of polarisation included identifying government fractions and leaders as Nazis and fascists. This discourse revived practices that were common in Uruguayan politics in the 1930s and 1940s. However, in 1962 it was justified by the links Lista 15 claimed existed between the highest government officials and the violent extreme right-wing groups that had emerged at that time. From this premise, Lista 15 claimed that the PN's success in the 1962 elections would further damage Uruguayan democracy and increase the risk of an authoritarian regime coming to power.

The discourse of Lista 15 also criticised the government for how it responded to the increasingly frequent protest actions and demonstrations by workers and students. Batlle Berres and his fraction argued that the government responded to the protests with unjustified and disproportionate brutality, including torture. Lista 15 presented itself as the only political group actor capable of channelling social unrest through dialogue and negotiation and re-establishing coexistence patterns based on respect for individual liberties.

Finally, the discourse of Batlle Berres and his fraction emphasised its differences with the government, identifying it with the defence of the interests of the landowning oligarchy. The government was accused of defending a self-seeking elite that had historically opposed the modernisation and development model promoted by Batllismo. The attacks on the egalitarian and united Uruguay that Batllismo had built were presented as a threat to the bases of exceptionalism differentiating Uruguay from the rest of Latin America.

The analysis of the discourse of Lista 15 between 1959 and 1962 shows it as an actor fully involved in the strategy of discursive polarisation adopted by the majority of the party system. Its significance as the majority fraction of the main opposition party in the period studied and as the majority fraction of the governing party between 1947 and 1958 makes it reasonable to assume that its contribution to the general polarisation of the system was not marginal.

This paper advances understanding of the role played by one of the most important and least studied actors of the Uruguayan party system during a critical period of the polarisation process that preceded the fall of democracy in 1973. However, future research should address some of the many questions that remain to be answered. Among these are questions regarding the factors that explain the role played by Lista 15 in the polarisation of the period. Opposition to the government by means of a discourse based on confrontation between antagonistic and mutually exclusive alternatives may have responded to the rhetoric used by the Herrerista–Ruralista alliance. At the same time, the discourse of the fraction led by Batlle Berres may have been a strategy aimed at competing with the parties of the traditional Left and with left-wing fractions within the PC itself. Finally, future research should analyse this process in light of Lista 15's radical ideological shift after Batlle Berres’ death in June 1964, which involved more than the inevitable disputes over the leadership and the loss of electoral support: by 1966, with the Colorados back in government, Lista 15, now led by Jorge Batlle, adopted an orthodox neoliberal programme in its economic policy and conservative – and increasingly anti-communist – rhetoric in its politics.

References

1 The PN, also known as Partido Blanco (White Party), and the PC are Uruguay's oldest parties, dating back to the first decades of the nineteenth century. In very general terms, one can say that, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the years prior to the 1973 coup d’état, the PC was predominantly more urban, secular, statist and egalitarian, whereas the PN was more rural and conservative in values, and more economically liberal and pro-market. These differences apart, by the beginning of the twentieth century both parties were national mass-membership organisations with various internal fractions that attracted voters in all social strata.

2 Uruguay has had democratic regimes from 1916 to 1933, from 1942 to 1973, and since 1985.

3 Luis Batlle Berres, speech, Esnal Club, Montevideo, 6 April 1962, quoted in Santiago Rompani (ed.), Luis Batlle. Pensamiento y acción. Discursos y artículos, vol. 1 (Montevideo: Alfa, 1965), pp. 701–7.

4 Following Sartori, Giovanni, Parties and Party Systems (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar, I use the term ‘fraction’ to refer to observable sub-units within parties; furthermore, ‘fraction’ is cognate with Spanish ‘fracción’, used by Uruguayans in the same sense.

5 Luis Batlle Berres (1897–1964) was a nephew of two-time President José Batlle y Ordóñez (1903–7 and 1911–15). Batlle Berres was a deputy in Uruguay's lower chamber of Parliament between 1923 and 1933 and between 1942 and 1946. In 1946, he was elected vice-president; he became president in August 1947 on the death of President Tomás Berreta. The period that includes the PC governments, which were dominated by Batlle Berres’ fraction, has been called ‘Neobatllismo’. The terms ‘Batllismo’ and ‘Batllista’ are used to refer to (members of) the fractions of the PC that claim to continue the tradition founded by the two governments of Batlle y Ordóñez. For more information about Batlle Berres, see D'Elía, Germán, El Uruguay neo-batllista, 1946–1958 (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1986)Google Scholar; Frega, Ana, ‘Como el Uruguay no hay. Consideraciones en torno al Estado “neobatllista” y su crisis’, Encuentros, Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinarios, 2 (1993), pp. 91–103Google Scholar; Jorge Chagas, ‘Una interpretación del denominado “Neobatllismo”’, Thesis, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, 2013; Ferreira, Pablo, ‘La 15 y la 14. Dos lecturas del legado batllista’, in Daniel Buquet, Daniel Chasquetti and Felipe Monestier (eds.), Colorados (Montevideo: Crítica, 2021), pp. 259–67Google Scholar.

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10 Back copies of Acción are not available online. Physical copies can be consulted in the press collections of the Biblioteca Nacional del Uruguay (BNU) and of the Biblioteca del Poder Legislativo de Uruguay (BPLU), both located in Montevideo.

11 The transition to democracy in Uruguay is conventionally regarded to have begun in 1980, with the voters’ rejection of a new constitution drafted by the military. The first post-authoritarian democratic government was installed in 1985.

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22 Eduardo Rey Tristán, A la vuelta de la esquina: La izquierda revolucionaria uruguaya, 1955–1973 (Montevideo: Fin de Siglo, 2006); Duffau, Nicolás, El Coordinador (1963–1965): La participación de los militantes del Partido Socialista en los inicios de la violencia revolucionaria en Uruguay (Montevideo: FHCE, 2008)Google Scholar.

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24 D'Elía, El Uruguay neo-batllista; Frega, ‘Como el Uruguay no hay’; Chagas, ‘Una interpretación del denominado “Neobatllismo”’.

25 Ferreira, ‘La 15 y la 14’; Rodríguez Metral, ‘“Los profesores soviéticos”’; Felipe Monestier and Pablo Ferreira, ‘La Lista 14 y la formación de un batllismo de derecha’, in Magdalena Broquetas and Gerardo Caetano (eds.), Historia de los conservadores y las derechas en Uruguay, vol. 2: Guerra Fría, reacción y dictadura (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 2022), pp. 47–63; Pablo Ferreira Rodríguez, ‘Batllismo, reforma política y conflicto social en los tempranos cincuenta: Una mirada desde la teoría de la democracia y la ciudadanía’, Revista Encuentros Uruguayos, 5: 1 (2012), pp. 179–205.

26 Jorge Batlle Ibáñez (1927–2016) served as a deputy and senator in several sessions of Parliament from 1958. He was a presidential candidate in 1966, 1971, 1989 and 1994. In 1999, he won the presidential election and governed the country between 2000 and 2005. On the process of ideological change led by Jorge Batlle after the death of his father, see Pablo Ferreira Rodríguez, ‘La república perdida: Democracia y ciudadanía en el discurso político de los batllistas de la lista quince: 1946–1972’, Master's thesis, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, 2013 and ‘El otro viraje: Democracia y ciudadanía en el discurso de la lista quince ante los debates constitucionales de 1951 y 1966’, Contemporánea, 5 (2014), pp. 105–23; Matías Rodríguez Metral, ‘En el llano: Adaptación política y renovación del programa económico de la Lista Quince del Partido Colorado, 1958–1966’, Master's thesis, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, 2017.

27 Jorge Lanzaro, ‘El presidencialismo pluralista en la “segunda” transición (1985–1996)’, in Lanzaro (ed.), La ‘segunda’ transición en el Uruguay: Gobierno y partidos en un tiempo de reformas (Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria, 2000), p. 103.

28 Ibid., p. 102.

29 Panizza, Francisco, Uruguay: Batllismo y después: Pacheco, militares y tupamaros en la crisis del Uruguay batllista (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1990), p. 99Google Scholar.

30 A constitutional reform approved in 1951 replaced the system of presidential unitary executive power with a Consejo Nacional de Gobierno (National Council of Government) composed of nine members, six from the majority party and three from the opposition, referred to as the ‘Colegiado’. A previous version of the Colegiado had functioned between 1918 and 1934. On the development of Uruguay's institutions, see Chasquetti, Daniel, ‘Tres experimentos constitucionales. El complejo proceso de diseño del Poder Ejecutivo en Uruguay’, Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 27: 1 (2018), pp. 41–64Google Scholar.

31 The Tribunal de Cuentas (Court of Auditors), the Tribunal de lo Contencioso Administrativo (Administrative Court) and the Corte Electoral (Electoral Court).

32 According to available estimates, in 1966 the two major parties had 8,000 clubs operating in Montevideo, where 525,000 citizens were eligible to vote: Rama, Germán, El club político (Montevideo: Arca, 1971), p. 13Google Scholar.

33 Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 5–8; Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, ‘Introduction: The Postwar Conjuncture in Latin America: Democracy, Labor, and the Left’, in Bethell and Roxborough (eds.), Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–32.

34 A law (no. 10,449) establishing collective wage bargaining (Consejos de Salarios), which included monetary transfers to families with children (Asignaciones Familiares), was passed in 1943. In the following years, the Uruguayan state nationalised trolley-bus companies (1947), trains (1948), aviation (1951) and the company charged with the supply and distribution of drinking water (1952). Additionally, during 1942–58 the country strengthened protectionist measures to promote import substitution industrialisation. See Luis Bértola, La industria manufacturera uruguaya, 1913–1961: Un enfoque sectorial de su crecimiento, fluctuaciones y crisis (Montevideo: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, 1991); Fernando Filgueira et al., ‘Los dos ciclos del Estado uruguayo en el siglo XX’, in Benjamín Nahum and Gerardo Caetano (eds.), El Uruguay del siglo XX, vol. 2: La política (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 2003), pp. 173–204; Finch, M. H. J., A Political Economy of Uruguay since 1870 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1981), p. 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Panizza, Uruguay, p. 92.

36 See Laclau, Ernesto, La razón populista (Buenos Aires: FCE, 2005)Google Scholar; Kirk Hawkins, Scott Riding and Cas Mudde, ‘Measuring Populist Attitudes’, Committee on Concepts and Methods, Working Paper Series, 55, 2012.

37 Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, ‘Conclusion: The Postwar Conjuncture in Latin America and its Consequences’, in Bethell and Roxborough (eds.), Latin America, pp. 327–34.

38 Porrini, Rodolfo, La nueva clase trabajadora uruguaya (1940–1950) (Montevideo: FHCE, 2005)Google Scholar. See also note 34.

39 See note 7. Through this pact, called the Coincidencia Patriótica (Patriotic Concordance), Batlle Berres obtained support for a series of reforms that broadened the field of state intervention in the economy. In exchange, the Herreristas obtained numerous positions in the Colegiado. Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla, ‘El gobierno como cogobierno: Despliegues y repliegues de la partidocracia uruguaya, 1942–1973’, in Lanzaro (ed.), La ‘segunda’ transición en el Uruguay, p. 239.

40 Bértola, La industria manufacturera uruguaya, pp. 269–73; Finch, A Political Economy of Uruguay, pp. 220–45.

41 Lanzaro, Jorge, Sindicatos y sistema político: Relaciones corporativas en el Uruguay, 1940–1985 (Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria, 1986), pp. 69–70Google Scholar.

42 Buquet, Daniel and Chasquetti, Daniel, ‘La democracia en Uruguay: Una partidocracia de consenso’, Política, 42 (2004), pp. 221–47Google Scholar.

43 On the origin of the Ruralist movement and Nardone's rise to power see Jacob, Raúl, Benito Nardone: El ruralismo hacia el poder (1945–1958) (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1981)Google Scholar. Nardone was a member of the Colegiado between 1959 and 1963 (President, 1960–1).

44 On the role of Nardone and Ruralism in the spread of anti-communism see Jung, Reali and Vázquez, ‘La prédica de Nardone’; Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’.

45 José Pedro Barrán, Los conservadores uruguayos, 1870–1933 (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 2004); Gerardo Caetano, El liberalismo conservador (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 2021).

46 On lead-up to the coup of 1933, see Gerardo Caetano and Raúl Jacob, El nacimiento del terrorismo, vol. 2: Camino al golpe (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1990).

47 Quoted by Jacob, Benito Nardone, p. 140.

48 Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’; Broquetas, La trama autoritaria.

49 Finch, A Political Economy of Uruguay, p. 229.

50 Bértola, La industria manufacturera uruguaya, p. 246.

51 Alonso Eloy and Demasi, Uruguay 1958–1968; Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’; Broquetas, La trama autoritaria.

52 Rama, Germán W., La democracia en Uruguay: Una perspectiva de interpretación (Montevideo: Arca, 1987), p. 109Google Scholar.

53 These efforts included presenting bills similar to those approved by several other Latin American countries outlawing communist or Marxist parties and to control the accession of ‘internal enemies’ to public office by requiring ‘declarations of democratic faith’: Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’, p. 8.

54 The MPS govern the declaration of a state of emergency. Through this mechanism, the executive power may suspend the rule of law in circumstances that include ‘external attack’ and ‘internal commotion’. These measures have appeared in all Uruguayan constitutions since 1830. On the use of the MPS in Cold War Uruguay see Mariana Iglesias, ‘La excepción como práctica de gobierno en Uruguay, 1946–1963’, Contemporánea, 2 (2011), pp. 137–55.

55 Aldrighi, ‘La estación montevideana de la CIA’; Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’; Aldrighi (ed.), Conversaciones reservadas; Broquetas, La trama autoritaria.

56 Bucheli, Gabriel, ‘Organizaciones “demócratas” y radicalización anticomunista en Uruguay, 1959–1962’, Contemporánea, 3 (2012), pp. 31–52Google Scholar; Broquetas, La trama autoritaria.

57 The crime was never solved, but investigations confirmed the presence of armed right-wing extremist groups at the scene and the existence of links between them and the intelligence services of the US embassy: Bacchetta, Víctor L., El asesinato de Arbelio Ramírez: La república a la deriva (Montevideo: Doble Clic Editores, 2010)Google Scholar.

58 Ernesto Bohoslavsky and Magdalena Broquetas, ‘Vínculos locales y conexiones transnacionales del anticomunismo en Argentina y Uruguay en las décadas de 1950 y 1960’, Nuevo mundo, mundos nuevos, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.70510 (URL last accessed 29 Aug. 2023); ‘Brutal atentado nazi contra una joven’, Acción, 7 July 1962; Época, 7 July 1962, p. 7, available in the BNU.

59 Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’, p. 119.

60 Daniel Álvarez Ferretjans, Historia de la prensa en el Uruguay: Desde La Estrella del Sur a Internet (Montevideo: Búsqueda–Fin de Siglo, 2008); Julio María Sanguinetti, Luis Batlle Berres: El Uruguay del optimismo (Montevideo: Taurus, 2014).

61 Available estimates state that Acción had an average daily circulation of 20,000; Montevideo had approximately 350,000 households at the time: Faraone, Roque, La prensa de Montevideo: Estudio sobre algunas de sus características (Montevideo: Facultad de Derecho, 1960)Google Scholar and Medios masivos de comunicación (Montevideo: Nuestra Tierra, 1969).

62 See, for example, the editorials of the following issues: 2, 14, 19, 20 and 26 Jan.; 7 March; 5, 7, 9, 16, 20, 23, 26, 27, 28, 30 and 31 July; 2, 3 and 15 Aug.; 28 Oct.; 11, 12 and 15 Nov., all from 1962.

63 Accusations that Herrerismo was sympathetic to the Axis forces had been commonplace in the political struggle of the 1930s and 1940s. See José Rilla, La actualidad del pasado: Usos de la historia en la política de partidos del Uruguay (1942–1972) (Montevideo: Debate, 2008); Barrán, Los conservadores uruguayos; Alonso Eloy and Demasi, Uruguay 1958–1968.

64 Rompani (ed.), Luis Batlle, vol. 1, pp. 616–18.

65 ‘De domingo a domingo’, Acción, 11 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

66 ‘Ya no es más democrática’, Acción, 12 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

67 Speech, Tacuarembó, Acción, 11 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

68 Acción, 18 Nov. 1962, p. 3. The report does not identify the speaker, although some references in the text suggest that it was Amílcar Vasconcellos, a leading figure of the fraction, former minister and, between 1963 and 1967, representative of the opposition in the Colegiado.

69 Acción, 5 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

70 Acción, 22 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

71 Acción, 14 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

72 Acción, 20 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

73 ‘Pensando en el país’, Acción, 30 Oct. 1962, p. 3.

74 ‘Cuidar las libertades’, Acción, 4 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

75 President of the Republic from 1985 to 1990 and from 1995 to 2000; a leading figure in Uruguayan politics since the middle of the twentieth century.

76 ‘Tradición colorada’, Acción, 29 July 1962, p. 3.

77 ‘Cuidar las libertades’.

78 Paradoxically, during the 1966–73 governments of the PC, many of the Batllista leaders who had condemned the suppression of demonstrations by the teaching unions and the student movement in 1962 adopted very similar measures.

79 Acción, 26 Oct. 1962, p. 3.

80 ‘La autonomía de la enseñanza amenazada’, Acción, 30 Jan. 1962, p. 3.

81 Acción, 20 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

82 Ibid.

83 ‘Danza de sables’, Acción, 30 Oct. 1962, p. 6.

84 Diario de Sesiones de la Cámara de Representantes (the official record of the proceedings of the lower chamber of Parliament), 19 July 1962, pp. 66–7, quoted by Bruno, ‘La caza del fantasma’, p. 73.

85 A method of torture in which the victim is forced to sit for long periods astride a sharp edge, causing pain and damage to the perineum.

86 Acción, 24 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

87 ‘Ya nadie puede dudar’, Acción, 11 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

88 D'Elía, El Uruguay neo-batllista, p. 48.

89 Acción, 8 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

90 ‘Cuando amenazan los poderosos’, Acción, 11 Feb. 1962, p. 3.

91 Roballo, speech, Tacuarembó, Acción, 11 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

92 ‘Ya nadie puede dudar’.

93 ‘El País las anuncia’, Acción, 17 Jan. 1962, p. 3.

94 ‘¿Traición del subconsciente?’, Acción, 2 Jan. 1962, p. 3.

95 Enrique Rodríguez Fabregat, speech, Acción, 13 Nov. 1962, p. 7. Rodríguez Fabregat was a candidate for the Colegiado.

96 ‘La risa de los Ubedes’, Acción, 8 Oct. 1962, p. 3. The ‘Ubedes’ were members of the Unión Blanca Democrática (White Democratic Union, UBD) fraction of the PN.

97 Rodríguez Fabregat, speech, 13 Nov. 1962.

98 Acción, 15 Nov. 1962, p. 3.

99 Batlle Berres, speech, Esnal Club, 6 April 1962.

100 ‘Ya nadie puede dudar’.

Figure 0

Figure 1. ‘Lista 15’, 1958 electionsNote: Originally printed in red ink.Source: Corte Electoral del Uruguay, Montevideo.