Jorge Larrañaga of the conservative National Party gained 34 percent. Guillermo Stirling of the ruling Colorado Party was decisively defeated, received only 10.3 percent.

The National Party and the Colorado Party have alternated in power for more than 100 years.

Vázquez’s victory was the first by a social-democratic politician in Uruguay’s 170-year history. It follows a pattern of electoral successes by similar political forces elsewhere in Latin America—such as social democrats Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil and Ricardo Lagos in Chile, and Peronist Néstor Kirchner in Argentina. Those politicians were voted into office after promising to improve the living standards of working people, which have been devastated by the economic depression that has engulfed much of South America in the last half-decade.

“I promise to work intensely to bring about the needed changes for this country,” Vázquez told supporters at the Frente Amplio’s headquarters in Montevideo, the nation’s capital. He vowed to lead a “government of changes that would work to improve Uruguayans’ living standards in the not too-distant future,” the Financial Times reported.

Uruguay, a country of 3.5 million people, has been recovering from a four-year recession during which unemployment soared to around 20 percent, increasing the impoverishment of layers of the working class. The economic crisis in neighboring countries, especially Argentina and Brazil, spurred Uruguay’s downturn. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) plunged nearly 20 percent and its foreign debt doubled. In 2002 a financial crisis socked the economy. The GDP shrunk 10 percent when Argentines pulled deposits out of Uruguay’s banks and the currency lost half its value. As the Uruguayan peso fell relative to the U.S. dollar, inflation surged, making it more difficult for working people to purchase needed goods and services.

A mild economic recovery is now under way. The GDP is projected to grow at least 10 percent this year, while inflation has stabilized. Uruguay’s chief exports—which include meat, rice, leather goods, wool, fish, and dairy products—are at record levels. This upturn has raised the expectations of working people.

As in neighboring Argentina, the people of Uruguay have enjoyed a relatively higher standard of living than the populations of other Latin American countries, especially Bolivia or Paraguay. Life expectancy is nearly 76 years of age and infant mortality is 12.3 deaths per 1,000 live births. In contrast, Bolivia, one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, has a life expectancy of 65 years and an infant mortality rate of approximately 55 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Uruguay’s current president, Jorge Batlle, came under fire “for pursuing closer ties with the United States in response to the economic collapse that hit Argentina three years ago,” said an article in the November 3 the International Herald Tribune.

At the same time, Vázquez has sought to assure Wall Street investors that his administration will pursue “market-friendly policies” similar to those of Lula in Brazil.

“It won’t be a copy of Brazil,” said Senator Danilo Astori, who Vázquez has chosen to be his economy minister. The new government, however, would be “prudent in managing public accounts and maintaining stability in monetary and foreign exchange policy,” Astori told the New York Times.

“Everything is normal,” asserted one confident banker in Uruguay. “Nobody is nervous, and money isn’t leaving the country.”

Uruguay’s Broad Front, which will have a majority in both houses of Congress, is a coalition that was founded in 1970. It includes bourgeois formations, particularly two factions that broke from the ruling Colorado and National parties; the traditional Stalinist and social-democratic groups—the Communist Party and the Socialist Party; a handful of prominent intellectuals; and an array of unions and cultural associations. Some of its prominent members are former leaders of the Tupamaros guerrilla group.

The chief architect of the coalition was the Communist Party. It launched the alliance along with the social democrats as part of its “popular front” policy of class collaboration with sectors of the bourgeoisie. It was designed to divert working people from waging struggles independent of the ruling class in Uruguay. The Broad Front’s presidential slates were those candidates deemed acceptable to ruling circles. One example is Gen. Liber Seregni, who ran for president in the 1971 elections on the ticket of the Broad Front.

The Tupamaros, an urban guerrilla group, was formed in 1963 in response to the resistance among working people to worsening social conditions. The organization engaged in kidnappings, bombings, robberies, and shoot-outs with soldiers and cops. This course of action limited its political effectiveness. While the group claimed its armed actions targeted capitalist oppression, the Tupamaros aided the Broad Front’s bourgeois electoral campaigns. During the 1971 presidential election, for example, the Tupamaros halted their guerrilla warfare, “so as not to embarrass the Broad Front,” reported the magazine Intercontinental Press in its Dec. 13, 1971, issue.

In 1973 the Uruguayan military seized power and suspended the constitution. The regime launched a crackdown against the Tupamaros guerrillas. It also banned all left-wing political parties and arrested thousands of their members, as well as hundreds of trade unionists. Torture became widespread. An estimated 400,000 Uruguayans fled the country during the 1970s.

Civilian rule was restored in 1985 after years of mass protests against the dictatorship. In November 1983, for example, about 400,000 people demonstrated in Montevideo. In June of the following year, a general strike to mark the 11th anniversary of the 1973 military coup paralyzed the Uruguayan capital and other cities. The Tupamaros renounced guerrilla struggle and formed an electoral party.

Workers’ history of struggle against military rule and the expectations awakened by the election of the new regime will pose a challenge for the Vázquez government. And given the nation’s rapidly falling living standards, it will be difficult for the new administration “to ignore demands for wage rises,” noted the Financial Times. Because the new administration has every intention of upholding the capitalist system, which is marching into a worldwide depression, it will increasingly find itself at odds with the working people and middle-class layers who put it in office.  
 
 
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