By TARSUS GENUS*
Let's hope that the three progressive governments of the "south of the southern cone", Chile's Gabriel Boric, Uruguay's Yamandú Orsi and Brazil's Lula, put aside their secondary differences and forge an innovative relationship.
“Sean the orientales are illustrated as valuable”
(General Artigas).
1.
The “civic-military” dictatorship in Uruguay lasted 12 years. All dictatorships of any ideological extraction or political inspiration are cruel, but the degree of cruelty of some of them can be measured by the number of people killed, tortured, exiled and imprisoned during the regime of exception, considering their number in proportion to the population of the country dominated by gangs of civilian and military murderers, who normally assume state power in a dictatorial situation.
The number of people who suffered violence through torture in the prisons of the Uruguayan regime, whose military leaders never acknowledged that this had occurred, is incalculable, but the state terror — established there, during the regime — can be measured by a shocking figure: a country that at the time had a population of 3 million inhabitants had 10 percent of its population, 300 thousand inhabitants, forced to leave Uruguay.
The Broad Front was founded on February 5, 1971 and made illegal at the beginning of the military dictatorship, on June 27, 1973, when its top leader and founder, retired general Liber Seregni, was imprisoned by his far-right colleagues in the National Army for more than 10 years. Liber Seregni was released from prison in March 1984, tired but not defeated. He called for national conciliation, the return of exiles and the construction of a sovereign and just homeland for all the people: an independent homeland that unites the entire national community.
The first government of the Broad Front was presided over by Tabaré Vazquez (2005 to 2010), the second by José Mujica (2010 to 2015) and the third, again, by Tabaré Vazquez (2015 to 2020). The three terms incorporated, in their respective governments, both those who were in prisons, for having resisted the dictatorship with weapons in hand, and part of the “Blancos” and “Colorados”, as well as the socialists, communists and Christian Democrats who never credited the military regime with any political legitimacy to govern.
2.
This Sunday, the Broad Front returned to power with Yamandu Orsi as President and Carolina Cosse as Vice President. This is no small victory, in a context of global disorder, the rise of fascism in several regions of the globe, expanding colonial-imperial wars, rising terrorism and genocide in Gaza. In addition, there are coup attempts on the political scene that unite, in the sewers of clandestine politics, militiamen and fascist groups, military and civilian, against the homeland and democracy.
The entire scenario mentioned above is combined with the victory of Donald Trump in the USA, where this confessed criminal, in addition to closing borders to the people who have always been exploited by his Empire, began to implement primitive protectionist policies to defend his economy, whose GDP is in a phase of being surpassed by new military technologies and added to the production system in the formidable political expansion of People's China.
On the new position of the United States in the global context, José Luís Fiori makes a pertinent summary: “The Americans propose to act within the World System, based exclusively on their national interests, using their brute, financial, technological and military force to impose their will wherever they consider it necessary. With an appeal, only as a last resort, to the use of war.” In this way, they eliminate from their rhetoric the already minimal mediations of international law, replacing them with the brute force of militarized politics.
Uruguay is a small country in the south of the Southern Cone, but its brave, scrupulously democratic victory against a well-regarded, center-right government, in a South America still impacted by what was the incredible and evil denialist and corrupt government of Jair Bolsonaro and having, on the other side of its border, an Argentina besieged by all the evils of authoritarianism and the genocidal impoverishment of its population — this brave victory — renews our hopes.
Let us hope that the three progressive governments of the “south of the Southern Cone”, Chile under Gabriel Boric, Uruguay under Yamandú Orsi and Brazil under Lula, will put aside their secondary differences and forge an innovative relationship, based on strategic medium-term political ties to rethink democratic policies in South America. And to rethink the points of unity, for a sustainable climate transition, international trade relations of mutual benefit for our peoples and continental security pacts, based on their respective national sovereignties.
During the Empire, we formed a cowardly triple alliance that included Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, which devastated our neighboring country, Paraguay. To this day, Paraguay suffers the pains of that military defeat and the effects of the devastation of its population, as well as the institutional backwardness due to the succession of tyrants that followed that unequal war. Now is the time for the “Triple Alliance of Good” to confront fascism, rebuild democracy and the republic, and lead South America, together with other progressive governments, to block together the “dog of fascism” that, according to Bertolt Brecht, “is always in heat.”
*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (arts & crafts).
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