Fifty Years Ago Today...
Uruguay's President closed Parliament and the military officially took control over the country.
Today marks fifty years since the official start of the Uruguayan dictatorship. As I have argued elsewhere, the coup marked the end of the last vestiges of democracy in a country that had been forcefully shutting down dissent, instituting censorship, and repressing its people long before elected president Juan María Bordaberry closed Parliament and handed effective authority of the country over to the military. Bordaberry’s actions occurred just hours after recently elected Frente Amplio legislators attempted to open up an investigation into torture and crimes by the military. It was the last act by Parliament for 12 years. Tanks rolled into the capital for not the first time in 1973 and formalized the military’s rule, which would last until March 1985.
(photo from Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo)
Uruguay's period of rule didn’t occur in isolation; during the late Cold War, every government in the Southern Cone was run by a right-wing military dictatorship that looked different in make-up and form, but effectively governed from the perspective of the National Security Doctrine. They saw themselves are part of a pushback against left wing militancy, and charged themselves with ‘saving’ the country from left wing subversives and reinstituting a Catholic, patriarchal, anticommunist governing platform that could use all means necessary in its attempts to push that agenda.
Uruguay’s military rule, however, was notable for its use of political imprisonment, torture, and widespread censorship. It boasted the highest rate of political incarceration in the world. As a result, it garnered attention from activists around the world to respond to the conditions of Uruguayans living under the form of government. Last week, my book Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay was published, which explores this period in depth. It looks at the nature of the military’s rule, the local and international responses to its repression, attempts at initial accountability during the dictatorship’s downfall, and other social justice and rights movements that flourished in the dictatorship’s aftermath.
Except for a brief conclusion/epilogue, the book largely ends in 1989 with the defeat of the first attempt to overturn the military’s amnesty law. Yet, the fiftieth anniversary of the coup also provided an opportunity for me to write a few reflections about the long road to pursue accountability and its current state in Uruguay.
In ReVista: Harvard’s Review of Latin America, I go into some depth about the resurgent military discourse by a recently formed political party, the Cabildo Abierto, and what that means for attempts to reframe the state’s repression as a two-sided war.
Then, just this week, NACLA published a piece I co-wrote with the wonderful Gabriela Fried Amilivia about controversies over the compliance with the second dictatorship-era case to work its way through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Maidanik et al v. Uruguay. Here, we spotlight both resistance from President Luis Lacalle Pou’s administration to fully implement the ordered measures, as well as civil society’s vociferous efforts to keep fighting against impunity.
Commemorations about the fiftieth anniversary in Uruguay have been truly incredible to watch from afar. When I visited the country in late March of this year, I was struck actually by how few discussions or public art seemed to focus on the upcoming date. Yet, in the past three months, including May as the mes de la memoria, activities have exploded both in the capital and around the interior. Gabriela, for example, noted to me that in late May, the margarita flower (a symbol of the search for the disappeared since the 1980s), were seemingly everywhere around the capital. In talks, public commemorations, art, and events, the citizenry has mobilized to foreground discussions over the country’s darkest period. Amid the worst drought in the country’s history, public scandal from the presidential administration, and a resurgent far right party, remembering the importance of a commitment to human rights and democracy is perhaps more resonant than ever.
(Photo by Gabriela Fried Amilivia, May 2023)
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