Turning Activists into Voters in Uruguay: Frente Amplio and José Mujica

Written by Benjamin Dangl

December 3, 2009

Torrential rain didn’t keep voters away from the polls on Sunday, November 29th when José “Pepe” Mujica was elected president with 52% of the vote. The 74-year-old Agricultural Minister spent 14 years in jail for his participation in the Tupamaro guerilla movement, and has pledged to continue the policies of his predecessor, current left-leaning president Tabaré Vásquez. Mujica also promised that while president, he would return to his farm outside the capital city at least 5 hours a week to tend his flowers and vegetables.

“It’s the model of Lula,” Alfredo Garcé of the University of the Republic in Montevideo said of Mujica’s strategy. “To win the elections [in Brazil] he put on an Armani suit and said he wanted a government of the left but moderate to permit a political economy respectful of capitalism.” Garcé said, before the results of Sunday’s election were known, “It’s not Mujica they were voting for – he will win because of the party.”[1]

However charismatic and popular Mujica is, he owes a lot to the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), a political party that over its nearly 40 years in existence has transformed the political and social landscape of the country, from the grassroots to the presidential palace.

The Frente Amplio’s Long Road

The Frente Amplio (FA) began as a broad coalition of leftists that pulled together the Christian Democrat, Socialist and Communist parties of the country in 1971. At the very beginning the FA founders said the “fundamental objective of Frente Amplio is permanent political action and not electoral competition.” As part of that direction, the FA began nation-wide networks of base committees to open up the political process to more people, allowing for direct democracy from below, fewer political intermediaries, and grassroots power over decisions within the FA as a movement.[2] Two primary goals of the FA from the start were land reform and a stronger public sector. The coalition faced widespread repression under the dictatorship, which began in 1973. After surviving this period, it emerged as a political force after the dictatorship ended in 1984. The Uruguayan left and the FA’s base committees continued to grow throughout the 1980s.[3]

The Uruguayan left was further sparked to action in a movement for justice regarding the dictatorship, an issue many people united behind in 1986 when a “law of impunity” was passed, protecting the dictatorship’s members. This human rights movement participated in a referendum to get rid of the law; 25% of voters’ signatures were needed to convoke this referendum. Uruguayan analyst Raúl Zibechi writes, “To achieve this, neighborhood activists combed the country, going house-to-house, to dialogue with neighbors and explain what the law was about and to ask for their signatures. Some 30,000 activists participated in the door-to-door campaign. They visited 80% of Uruguay’s households; spoke with over one million people; and in some cases had to return two, three and even seven times to obtain a signature.” Though the referendum failed (42% were against the law, 52% were for it) it led many activists to become more familiar with their country, their fellow citizens, and to achieve a political presence in rural areas. This development also aided in the electoral advances of the Uruguayan left.[4]

The momentum of these years resulted in part in the election of Tabaré Vázquez as the mayor of Montevideo, the capital city, in 1989. When Vásquez took office in 1990 he established a broad network of organizations and methods to bring participation from the people into the local government. Communal councils were designed to actively monitor government operations, participate in budget-making, as well as design projects, and consider laws and policies at the grassroots level.[5]

Another event that empowered the Uruguayan left was a referendum organized in 1992 regarding a law that would have put the national telephone company and other public-run services under private control. The referendum politicized people, spread awareness and galvanized movements and unions against the legislation. As a result, 72% of the population voted against the law.[6]

The FA established juntas locales (local boards) as administrative and political authorities in late 1993 in each of Montevideo’s 18 districts, while the neighborhood councils were made up of 25-40 members and acted in an advisory role from the bases. Both the boards and the councils operated as an arm of the government and FA party to distribute public services, funding and deal with administrative issues. Yet typical bureaucratic and centralized power soon took over this very democratic structure, stifling and limiting participation and enthusiasm from below as the 1990s continued. Zibechi writes, “Two new structures (one political and one social) mediated the interaction between city residents and the local governments, and two parallel authorities filtered social demands, with little communication between the two. The limited power granted to the neighborhood councils, in contrast to the broad political responsibilities reserved for the local boards, discouraged social participation, as indicated by the growing rate of desertion among the councils, which in 1997 averaged 45 percent.”[7]

Leading up to the victory of the FA in the 2004 presidential elections, the National Commission in Defense of Water and Life (CNDAV) was organized in 2003 by a broad based coalition of movements, groups and organizations to fight water privatization. The CNDAV produced hundreds of thousands of signatures in October of 2003 for the plebiscite on October 31, 2004, which took place along with the national elections. In the vote, over 62% of the people voted for a constitutional change to prohibit the privatization of water and sewage systems.[8]

The base committees and the referendum helped lay the framework for the FA’s hegemony, support, and campaign network, which led to Vásquez’s election to the presidency. His chances for victory increased during a major economic crash in the country in 2002. Vásquez and the FA were seen as an alternative to the neoliberal plan which caused the crisis.[9]

In the 2004 presidential campaign, the FA prioritized policies to fight marginalization and poverty, expand healthcare and education services and increase democratic participation in the development of government policies. Yet as election day neared, the FA was willing to water down its plans in order to expand its voter base. José Mujica said, before the 2004 elections, “I do not believe that we would come to power, precisely now, on the crest of a revolutionary wave. We are almost asking permission from the bourgeoisie to let ourselves in, and we have to play the role of stabilizing the government if we get there, because we are operating under the rule of law. A government of our own will have to maneuver. And furthermore, I sincerely believe that we have many things to do before socialism. And we have to send the right signals, from an electoral point of view. What do you want me to do, scare the bourgeoisie?”[10]

The Hope of Vásquez

Vásquez was elected president in 2004. On March 1, 2005, the night Tabaré Vázquez was inaugurated President of Uruguay, a sea of people, flags and drum brigades surged through the streets of Montevideo. Fireworks pounded the air and car horns shrieked. The city bubbled with a cathartic happiness.

“Vázquez’s victory is a powerful change for Uruguay,” asserted Martin Bension, a history teacher in Montevideo. “Now the people will have more opportunities to participate in the government. Right from the foundation of the Frente Amplio, decades ago, there has been popular participation in it. The Frente makes people feel more connected, so more people become involved.”

“A lot of people died and went to jail in the seventies to win what the Frente Amplio has today,” Bension said. “Besides improvements in Uruguay, the nations of Latin America should unite – just as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is trying to do – in spite of our soccer rivalries!”

Bands played in the streets and people waved flags, pounded drums and drank the liquor stores dry to celebrate the inauguration. When the parties were over, much of this enthusiasm was channeled into the base committees of the FA.

Oscar Gandolo, a painter, had been active in his committee for five years. “The economy was going from bad to worse,” he recalled. “I had to do something… We have meetings every week where we get together and decide what we think the government needs to do, and cover issues that the government misses.” A couple of days after the presidential inauguration, the mood at a base committee in Montevideo was upbeat. The setting was typical of other party offices around Montevideo: a cluttered meeting room with books and political pamphlets stacked along tables, a picture of Che Guevara painted on the wall and campaign posters plastered everywhere. People filed into the room, joking, patting each other on the back and passing around yerba mate, a thick herbal tea popular in Uruguay and Argentina.

Eventually participants sat down and introduced themselves. They were carpenters, school teachers, plumbers, students, electricians, unemployed people and musicians. Some had been members of the party for decades, and others were showing up for the first time. They planned a cultural event with artists and musicians from Uruguay and Cuba. Then, after lengthy discussions, they elected a secretary, representative and treasurer. Security in the neighborhood and the condition of one of the main roads was the next topic of discussion.

Toward the end of the meeting, a long-standing member of the base committee spoke to the group: “For those who just arrived for the first time, we ask for your participation. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about politics. You’ll learn while you’re here. With this new government in office, the responsibility of the people is greater than ever before.”

Activists and Voters of the Frente Amplio

At a dinner with businessmen at the Inter-American Development Bank, Vásquez announced that Danilo Astori would be the Minister of Economy and Finances for his government. The selection of Astori, a former leftist but at that point a proponent of neoliberalism, produced applause from the right and condemnation from the left. Astori said he would continue the economic policies of his predecessors.[11] (Astori is now vice president-elect under Mujica.)

However, Vásquez did begin a “Social Emergency Plan” which allocated $100 million to social programs and relief for economic problems in areas such as housing, food, healthcare, and jobs.[12] Once in the presidential palace, the FA administration decided to pay the country’s external debt in spite of campaign promises; the government even paid their IMF debt in advance – a far cry from demands from the FA base to send that money to social projects.[13]  In spite of these setbacks there have been improvements in the relationship between the government and social sectors in their discussion on policies regarding workers’ rights. The government has also set aside funds toward addressing the needs of the massive amounts of unemployed and impoverished in the country. [14]

Under Vásquez, poverty has dropped from its 32% level in 2004, to 20%. In addition, the Ceibal Plan was developed to give a laptop with an internet connection to every primary school student in the country, and will now expand to reach secondary school students. A tax reform was also implemented which increased taxes for wealthier citizens.[15]

However, two years into the Vásquez administration’s time in government, Argentina-based writer Marie Trigona wrote of the situation in Uruguay, “social movements have become stagnated with the crucial question of ‘what next?’”[16]

Helios Sarthou, a former FA Senator and veteran lawyer for the FA, told journalist Mike Fox, ”The issue of power is extremely serious. Companions of mine, that were together in the struggle… are today, all silent, exercising their positions in the conquest of power.”  He said that the FA has shifted from its initial grassroots strategies, leading to a situation in which “the left converted its activists in to voters.”[17]

In any case, it is thanks to those votes that Mujica will be Uruguay’s next president. Now the Frente Amplio’s long road winds on, leading to political policies Mujica himself probably wouldn’t have supported as an idealistic Tupamaro guerrilla. As he said in the days leading up to the election, “we are not waiting for paradise, above all among the older people, but trying to escape from hell and cultivate hope.”[18]

***

Benjamin Dangl is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press) and the forthcoming book Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press).

Notes:

1. Jeff Farrell, “In Uruguay, former guerrilla wins by moving away from Chávez,” Christian Science Monitor, (November 30, 2009), http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1130/p06s04-woam.html.

2. Michael Fox, “Uruguay’s Frente Amplio,” Z Net, (June 19, 2007), http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15145.

3. Geraldine Lievesley, Reclaiming Latin America: Experiments in Radical Social Democracy, (Zed Books, 2009), 30.

4. Raúl Zibechi, Dispatches from Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism (South End Press, 2008), 135-136.

5. Center for Research on Direct Democracy, “Decentralization and Participatory Democracy in Montevideo, Uruguay: The Role of the Concejos Vecinales,”

http://www.c2d.ch/inner.php?lname=Research&table=Project&action=current&parent_id=39&link_id=1&sublinkname=current_projects.

6. Clifford Krauss, “The Welfare State Is Alive, if Besieged, in Uruguay,” New York Times, (May 3, 1998), http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/03/world/the-welfare-state-is-alive-if-besieged-in-uruguay.html.

7. Daniel Chavez, The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn (Pluto Press, 2008), 105.

8. Public Citizen, “Uruguay Bans Water Privatization,” 2004, http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/cmep_Water/reports/uruguay/.

9. Mark Engler, How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008), 267.

10. Daniel Chavez, The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn (Pluto Press, 2008), 111-112.

11. Ibid., 123.

12. Mark Engler, How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008), 267.

13. Michael Fox, “Uruguay’s Frente Amplio,” Z Net, (June 19, 2007), http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15145.

14. Raúl Zibechi, Dispatches from Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism, (South End Press, 2008), 137-138.

15. Marie Trigona, “What Does Bush Want With Uruguay?” Z Net, (March 26, 2007), http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/2882.

16. Dario Montero, “Elections – Uruguay: Landslide Victory for Former Guerilla,” IPS News, (November 30, 2009), http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49469.

17. Michael Fox, “Uruguay’s Frente Amplio,” Z Net, (June 19, 2007), http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15145.

18. Antonio Peredo Leigue, “El Uruguay de Pepe Mujica,” Rebelión, (October 21, 2009), http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=93699.

Reclaiming a Continent: Latin American Experiments in Democracy

Written by Benjamin Dangl

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Reviewed: Reclaiming Latin America: Experiments in Radical Social Democracy, Edited by Geraldine Lievesley and Steve Ludlam. Zed Books (August 18, 2009), 288 pages

Reclaiming Latin America: Experiments in Radical Social Democracy provides an in depth and accessible introduction to Latin American politics for people seeking to understand this past tumultuous and hopeful decade. While avoiding superficial analysis and simplistic leftist cheerleading, this book addresses the complexity and diversity of the new Latin American left.

Many of the contributors to this book write of the leftist shift with sober exuberance peppered with undeniable facts that point to a geopolitical sea change. As analyst Emir Sader says, “Eleven Latin America presidents have been ejected before the end of their mandates over the last fifteen years, not by the traditional process of US-backed military coup, but through the action of popular movements against the neoliberal policies of their governments. The one old-style coup attempt of the period, against Chavez in 2002, was defeated.” This quote and other hopeful commentaries on the left throughout the book are shadowed by the coup in Honduras, which took place after this book was completed. As I mixed reading this book with reading reports from Honduras, I kept wondering how the authors of Reclaiming Latin America might have altered their assessments had they written their chapters after President Manuel Zelaya was ushered off in his pajamas to Costa Rica.

However, there have been many recent events just as profound as the coup in Honduras taking place in Latin America, and this book offers a rich field map of the currents that still move the continent. This book particularly shines when the authors’ gazes move toward the relationships between social movements and left-leaning governments in the region.

Central to the book are questions of power, autonomy and sustainable pathways to radical change. As editor Geraldine Leivesley writes, “Radical social democratic governments can support social transformation but they cannot develop, consolidate and sustain it. This can only really be done by people themselves, working in communities and forging links with other, like-minded communities within and across national borders. This does not mean that such groups should not deal with the state – this is inevitable – but that they should structure and take control of that relationship.”

Also present in many of the pages are discussions of the role social movements played in electing leftist governments. Fransisco Dominguez writes, “The Brazilian [Workers Party] PT originates in the militant trade unionism of the 1970s, and the Bolivian MAS originates in the cocalero union of coca growers… In Argentina it was mainly the four thousand-odd actions of the piqueteros (roadblockers) which led to President Fernando de la Rua’s ousting in December 2001.”

Democracy and Social Change: From Montevideo to Caracas

Uruguay is set up in Reclaiming Latin America as a fascinating and emblematic example of a left of center leader taking power with support from grassroots networks. Lievesley writes that the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), the political party and coalition of current President Tabaré Vázquez, was created in 1971 out of a collection of Christian Democrats, leftists, communists and socialists that united to break the two party rule of the Blanco and Colorado Parties. Those two parties had run the country since 1830 when Uruguay had won independence from Spain. “The Frente’s founders formed comités de base, grassroots committees which they hoped would promote participatory democracy and contribute to the transformation of what was a hidebound political system,” writes Lievesley. The primary goals of the FA from the start were land reform and a stronger public sector.

Though the FA coalition faced widespread repression, torture and disappearances during a dictatorship which began in 1973, it re-emerged as a political force with the return to democracy in 1984. The momentum of these early years culminated in 1989 with the election of Tabaré Vázquez as the mayor of Montevideo, the capital city. However, the Lievesley writes, “Since 2004, a growing distance has developed between the Frente’s ambitious hierarchy and its grassroots… Veteran activists do not share the same values as younger Frente members, who have no memories of the years of clandestinity and struggle, and view the organization as a means to further their careers.”

The Bolivarian political process in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has been more dynamic than that of the FA in Uruguay. One chapter in Reclaiming Latin America explores social democracy within the educational, health and community programs in the country. Author Sara C. Motta describes some of the government’s social programs in the La Vega barrio in Caracas, Venezuela. Motta writes that while access to healthcare certainly helps people’s lives, the institutionalization of social movements in this process can be harmful to community organizing. “[H]ealth can become a particular issue solved in a functional manner that undermines the community’s organization and therefore the development of a participatory social democracy. Individuals who were once organizers of their communities become functionaries of the state.” This can have a weakening effect on the community’s autonomy and capacity to self-organize, Motta explains.

With Mission Ribas, classes are taught in neighborhoods across the country to meet the local needs of the community. Students use their education to solve problems in their communities with projects and planning. Elizabeth, a participant in this process, reflects, “We have organized all over La Vega. Many of the students are women. It has been an emancipatory experience for me and many others who have begun to believe in their ability to solve problems in the community.” Yet in seeking to solve a housing or public service problem, writes Motta, the education “seeks to enable the student to find solutions for particular problems, such as inadequate housing, within the limits of broader structures of power. In doing so it attempts to democratize these broader structures, but not transform them.”

Motta also writes of the Consejos Comunales, which provide a means for regular citizens to participate in governance and the management of funds and resources. Through this program, communities can organize themselves into a Consejo with a representative, then design proposals and projects. “Consejos are an attempt to create a new set of state institutions that bypass the traditional state, and distribute power in a democratic and participatory manner,” writes Motta.

At one national meeting addressing this process a working group concludes, “We must obtain the tools to be able to struggle against the bureaucracy and search for a way to get rid of leaders that want to control us, look to maintain their own power and who divide the community.” Participant Edenis Guilarte says, “What we are doing is training, creating consciousness, which is a process that goes beyond repairing a road, obtaining a service, enabling access to water, it’s a macro process, a process of social change, a fight over ideas and practice.”

In spite of any setbacks to the Consejos Comunales, they do offer new spaces for growth, localized responses to development which can and do dismiss clientelistic tendencies, and assert autonomy over time. The Consejos have given the people the seeds to grow beyond the state. Yet Motta concludes, the political struggle “revolves around the question of whether [the consejos comunales] become an institution that channels the demands of poor communities to a localized social democracy (with all the possibilities and limitations that this entails) or whether they enable the expansion of demands for community self-management that challenge capitalist and social relations.”

Protests and Parties in Bolivia and Brazil

John Crabtree contributed a chapter on Bolivia which provides a brief overview of the country’s political and social history, the roots and policies of the Evo Morales government, and the social movements’ actions in directing the country’s future. Crabtree looks at the role the state has played in managing natural gas resources since Morales took office, as well as describes the constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution and the regional and political divisions in Bolivia. He looks at Morales’ new social programs in health, education and housing, and describes Morales’ relationships with other regional leaders seeking independence from Washington. In spite of success in a number of areas, Crabtree does say, “The MAS lacked a clearly articulated program; it lacked experience in government; the machinery at its disposal for administering change was absent; and it was in no way a tightly disciplined party.”

In a chapter on Brazil, Sue Branford describes the euphoria of Lula’s victory, but goes on to write that in spite of leftist rhetoric and promises to his base on the campaign trail, upon taking office for the first time Lula turned his back on his progressive supporters: “The agreement with the IMF was quickly reaffirmed, and the target for the public sector surplus, required to service the internal debt, was set higher, at 4.25 per cent of GDP, than even the IMF demanded.” Lula later announced a 45% budget cut which disproportionately affected social programs for the poor. Unemployment and poverty skyrocketed across the country; in May of 2003, unemployment reached 20.6%, a new record at the time. Thanks to Lula, foreign corporations now dominate industrial, agricultural and banking sectors, and GM crops, specifically pushed by Monsanto, are produced across the country.

Reclaiming Latin America sets out to cover a lot of ground, and succeeds in doing so with other chapters on Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Mexico and the entire region. Over all, the contributors to the book maintain a healthy balance of analysis and reportage, throwing in the occasional anecdote and prose that keep the pages turning. The book, much like this past decade in Latin America, offers important lessons from ongoing experiments in democracy.

Feet to the Flames: Tabaré Vázquez Elected in Uruguay

by Benjamin Dangl

3/24/05

On March 1, 2005, the night Tabaré Vázquez was inaugurated as President of Uruguay, a sea of people, flags and drum brigades surged through the streets of Montevideo. Fireworks pounded the air and car horns shrieked. The city bubbled with a cathartic happiness.

In Uruguay, 30 per cent of the population of three million live below the poverty line, 15 per cent are unemployed and economic activity staggers along at a level 20 per cent below what it was in 1990. The country has the highest proportion of people aged over 60 in Latin America: 15 per cent – most of them young – have left the country in search of work.

In the face of these difficulties, voters in the 31 October 2004 presidential election evidently thought twice before voting for business as usual. The new Frente Amplio [Broad Front] Government is pledged to massive reforms in healthcare and education. It plans to reactivate sugar production, provide credit to farmers, raise the salaries of rural workers and implement an emergency strategy to deal with unemployment. The kidnappings and torture carried out by the military dictatorship in the 1970s will be investigated.

‘Vázquez’s victory is a powerful change for Uruguay,’ asserted Martin Bension, a history teacher in Montevideo. ‘Now the people will have more opportunity to participate in the Government. Right from the foundation of the Frente Amplio, decades ago, there has been popular participation in it. The Frente makes people feel more connected and so more people become involved…

‘A lot of people died and went to jail in the seventies to win what the Frente Amplio has today. The Vázquez administration knows this and will have to keep it in mind. Besides improvements in Uruguay, I would like Mercosur [Latin America’s ‘Southern Cone’ trade block] to work out. The nations of Latin America should unite – just as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is trying to do – in spite of our soccer rivalries! We can unify because of our common histories. We’ve all been colonized and controlled by foreign powers and these common characteristics can unite us.’

Vázquez has already reopened relations with Cuba and signed trade deals with Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil.

Neighbourhood Frente Amplio ‘base committees’ are located around the country. Oscar Gandolo, a painter, has been active in his neighbourhood for five years. ‘The economy was going from bad to worse,’ he recalled. ‘I had to do something… We have meetings every week where we get together and decide what we think the Government needs to do, and cover issues that the Government misses.’

A couple of days after the presidential inauguration, the mood at a base committee in Montevideo was upbeat. The setting was typical of other party offices around Montevideo; a cluttered meeting room with books and political pamphlets stacked along tables, a picture of Ché Guevara painted on the wall and campaign posters plastered everywhere. People filed into the room, joking, patting each other on the back and passing around mate, a thick herbal tea popular in Uruguay and Argentina.

Eventually they sat down and introduced themselves; carpenters, school teachers, plumbers, students, electricians, unemployed people, musicians. Some had been members of the party for decades; others were showing up for the first time.

First they planned a cultural event with artists and musicians from Uruguay and Cuba. Then, after lengthy discussions, they elected a secretary, a ‘representative’, a treasurer. They went on to talk about security in the neighbourhood and the condition of one of the main roads.

A long-standing member of the group spoke to new arrivals: ‘From those who just arrived for the first time, we ask for your participation. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about politics. You’ll learn while you’re here. With this new Government in office, the responsibility of the people is greater than ever before.’

To prevent the Vázquez government from bowing to the International Monetary Fund and corporate power, popular participation will be crucial. The new administration’s feet will have to be held to the flames to avoid the shift to the right which has occurred after the election of President Lula in Brazil. But, for now, hope and enthusiasm seem to be enough to carry the day.