In Democratic Uruguay, Sanguinetti Keeps Military, Politics in Balance

When a popular politician ended an 11-year exile on a clear and cold day two years ago this month, Uruguay’s military dictators greeted him with Orwellian zeal. Censors forbade newspapers to report the impending return but ordered them to publish a ban against attending it.

Today, as a gray Southern Hemisphere winter again settles over the River Plate, the incident is ancient history in a country that has recovered its democratic roots with remarkable elan.

Speeches, not sabers, are again the principal tools of government in a small, pastoral nation that has become a closely watched laboratory for change. The Uruguayan press is free again, the Congress is outspoken. The generals are back in their barracks. Nary a shot was fired.

In a Latin America where the democratic tide has reached historic proportions, opponents of lingering military dictators in Chile and Paraguay sometimes cite the Uruguayan experience as the kind of measured change they themselves seek.

‘Tough but Good Transition’

“Somehow, 12 years of dictatorship does not seem so near. The process of accommodation has not been easy, but the transition has been good,” said Julio M. Sanguinetti, who was principal architect of the military’s negotiated withdrawal from power and is now Uruguay’s elected president.

Sanguinetti’s task, one he shares with elected civilians in former dictatorships as different as Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras and El Salvador, is to keep the soldiers quiet and the politicians free.

On Monday, the pragmatic and articulate Sanguinetti carries the centrist banner of Latin America’s new democratic governments with him to the White House. The object of the five-day visit to the United States is to remind the Reagan Administration that Latin America’s tender democratic roots need care and attention.

“We will be stressing the restoration of democracy in Uruguayan territory,” said Foreign Minister Enrique Iglesias, an economist who for more than a decade headed the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America.

Cartoonists’ Delight

Sanguinetti, a master conversationalist whose trademark bushy eyebrows endear him to cartoonists, will also be making the case to the Reagan Administration for greater access to First World markets by Third World exports and the need for resolution of the Latin American debt crisis as a hemispheric issue of mutual and urgent political concern.

“The other day, one of our leftist magazines said the U.S. visit was appropriate since I am the opposite of Ronald Reagan,” Sanguinetti told a recent visitor. “Reagan was an old actor who became a politician, the magazine said, and Sanguinetti’s an old pol who became an actor.”

A member of a tiny political elite who had trained for public office from his teens--”at 18, I’d make five or six speeches a night in borrowed garages; total audience about 50”--Sanguinetti is a confident but cautious president.

Fifteen months after democracy was restored here, political waters are roiled as usual but not particularly turbulent. The strongest pressure against Sanguinetti comes from the left, where Marxist-led unions celebrate frequent strikes to support wage demands and their call for a break with Uruguay’s international creditors.

Improving Economy

After long, lean years between 1981 and 1985 when the gross domestic product fell 20% and real salaries dropped 35%, Uruguay’s agrarian-based economy is now improving. Real income is growing again, fueled by circumstances as diverse as splendid weather for crops and tourists and windfall drops in oil prices and interest rates.

Attacking inflation and government deficits with austerity, which includes attempts to reduce the size of the state, the Sanguinetti government has secured multiyear renegotiation of its $4.7-billion foreign debt. Restored confidence and a free exchange system have drawn about $280 million from abroad to Uruguayan banks, according to Economy Minister Ricardo Zerbino. A traditional soccer powerhouse, Uruguay is even back in World Cup play this year--to national exhilaration--after missing the last two.

Like their counterparts in all of Latin America’s restored democracies, prudent Uruguayan politicians glance frequently over their shoulders. The generals may no longer exercise political power, but they still have their guns and a world view that is slow to change.

‘No Overnight Change’

“The armed forces surrendered power at one particular instant, but after 12 years their way of thinking does not change overnight,” Sanguinetti said.

Uruguay’s officers retreated from power in remarkably good order: They still have the same commander, Gen. Hugo Medina, as they did when the armed forces ended their rule of the country.

One legacy of Uruguay’s dictatorship is the swollen security forces, which doubled in size during military rule. In a country without foreign enemies, there are now 38,000 members of the three armed services plus 22,000 policemen. They get a 22% share of the national budget and a lot of stroking from Sanguinetti while, at the same time, he seeks to reduce the military establishment to more practical dimensions.

At every turn, Sanguinetti must delicately balance conflicting priorities. He is, for example, an outspoken human rights advocate who is nevertheless notably chary of ongoing attempts by the left to stoke Argentine-style proceedings against officers accused of human rights abuses during the dictatorship. Between 1974 and 1978, an estimated 27 Uruguayans disappeared in Uruguay, and 130 vanished in neighboring Argentina as a result of what the left calls an alliance between two like-minded armed forces.

“The military has maintained great discipline and silence despite attacks from many sides, not all of them mounted in good faith,” Sanguinetti said.

Military, Civilian Balance

He has learned from long experience to weigh military reality against civilian pretension. By all accounts, his patience as head of the centrist Colorado Party proved instrumental in negotiating an end to the dictatorship born with a 1973 coup.

“I was proscribed for eight years, but in 1981 we began talking with the military. In 1982, they allowed the political parties to reorganize and elect new leaders,” Sanguinetti recalled. “Several times we got up from the table in anger and broke off the negotiations, but we kept talking. Finally, in June, 1984, after about 18 hard months, we reached an agreement to hold elections. It was an agreement. Nobody imposed it. That’s one reason it has worked.”

In the political context of a country of 3 million where the descendants of Italian and Spanish immigrants enjoyed unfettered democracy for nearly all of this century, the November, 1984, elections were flawed. Sanguinetti, who is now 50, was criticized for leading his main-line Colorados to them after agreeing to restrictions imposed by the military.

Wilson Ferreira, the proscribed, charismatic leader of the opposition center-left National Party, went immediately to jail after he returned to the country--the event that could neither be reported nor attended. Virtually the entire leadership of a Marxist-dominated Broad Front that is Uruguay’s third political force was either in jail or also proscribed.

Election With Stand-ins

Reluctantly buying Sanguinetti’s argument that the departure of the military counted more than the purity of the process, the Nationals contested the elections with a stand-in for Ferreira. The Broad Front also accepted the half-a-loaf formula and participated with second-rank candidates.

The urban-based, middle-class Colorados have long been the party of government in Uruguay, and Sanguinetti won the presidency with a strong plurality. The combined opposition won a majority in both houses of a restored congress.

Filled Political Gaps

Taking office in March, 1985, Sanguinetti immediately began filling in gaps left by the agreement with the military. He legalized banned Marxist parties. Ferreira was freed, and so were holdover political prisoners from an urban guerrilla insurgency that helped trigger the 1973 coup.

In the months since then, Uruguayan democracy has picked up as though it had never left off. Purposefully non-confrontational and anxious to avoid congressional deadlock, Sanguinetti has negotiated a package of proposals with opposition parties on issues ranging from export promotion and tourism to land taxes and collective bargaining. At present, three of Sanguinetti’s Cabinet ministers, including Iglesias, belong to opposition parties.

In charting a fresh course for Uruguay, Sanguinetti has been aided by a mature National Party willing to bide its time in the quest for power.

“Democracy is stronger than it was 15 months ago, but we must be careful to protect our institutions. All three major political groupings want to avoid a repetition of military rule. Our party’s disposition is to make government possible,” said Sen. Guillermo Garcia Costa, a senior National Party leader.