Uruguay’s broad front celebrates 50 years | …

The Broad Front (FA) of Uruguay, founded by left groups and dissidents from Colorado and national parties under the command ofl General Líber Seregni, celebrates its 50th anniversary this Friday. Its appearance breaks with the traditional bipartisanship that had existed in the country since the declaration of independence on August 25, 1825.

In the presidential elections of 1999, the FA took its first big step by winning the majority of the seats of senators and deputies to be won. Six years later With the oncologist Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010 and 2015-2020) and the ex-guerrilla of Tupamaro José “Pepe” Mujica (2010-2015), the FA took over the presidency and ruled the country for 15 years, a period characterized by important social conquests.

After the defeat in the 2019 elections of its candidate Daniel Martínez against the current president, Luis Lacalle Pou, and the recent death of Tabaré Vázquez, the FA needs a generational renewal to carry on its progressive legacy.

“Patchwork quilt” was the pejorative way that traditional Uruguayan political parties referred to the broad forehead. General Líber Seregni has become a key figure in understanding the projection of the local left, which at the time was almost monopolized by the Communist and Socialist parties.

The story began on February 5, 1971, when a session was held in the Hall of Lost Footsteps of the Legislative Palace to create the FA. Socialists, Communists, Christian Democrats, progressive sectors of the White Party and Colorado, trade unionists, workers and students gathered at the event.

The session was chaired by Senator Zelmar Michelini, who was kidnapped and murdered on May 18, 1976 in the streets of Buenos Aires with former National Party deputy Héctor Gutiérrez and political refugees Rosario Barredo and his partner William Whitelaw. At the end of the meeting, General Seregni declared that it was a historic act which concretized “the structuring of a deeply anti-imperialist movement”.

Seregni was a candidate for the FA in the presidential elections of 1971 and 1989. However, he was imprisoned during the Uruguayan military dictatorship, between 1973 and 1985, and could not be a candidate in the first transitional elections, due to the ban imposed by the armed forces.

After being detained and tortured, Seregni chaired the FA until 1996, when Tabaré Vázquez took over, in 1990 becoming the first left-wing mayor of Montevideo. Years later, he would be the first president of the Frente Amplio of Uruguay (2005-2010 and 2015-2020).

During his two governments, Vázquez reduced poverty from 32.5% in 2006 to 8.1% in 2018, under Mujica’s mandate, according to the Continuing Household Survey (ECH) of the National Institute of Statistics. At the end of August 2019, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal), Alicia Bárcena, stressed that Uruguay “is the most equal country in the region”.

The FA currently governs three major departments in Uruguay, including Montevideo. However, after 15 years in power, he went into opposition at the national level and the 2019 defeat is still being chewed up. “We are in a very strong self-criticism process. Surely because of a lot of things: we don’t connect with people, people are tired, people from the Front ask them for things and the Front could not give them … Maybe also superb … ” , says Rafael Michelini, first vice-president of the Socialist International and former Uruguayan senator.

This idea is shared by the political scientist Patricia González Viñoly, representative of the youth of Frente Amplio, who defends that “the unit does not agree on everything”. For González Viñoly, 34, “there is something strategic and also interesting about the way identity permeates generations” and that the coalition must join the defense of 21st century slogans, such as feminism or the environment.

The FA has been preparing for several months to commemorate its 50th anniversary, the organization of which has completely changed since the declaration of the health emergency due to the coronavirus. The party decided to commit two acts on February 5 inside the country, one of them in the Meseta de Artigas (Paysandú) and the other in Paso de los Toros (Tacuarembó). In addition to transmission through FA networks, leaders hope activists can celebrate in grassroots committees across the country, where they will receive food to distribute in popular pots and also collect signatures to promote the referendum. against the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC).