2023-06-27 05:01:00
With seminars, cultural events and urban interventions, in addition to the call for a union strike, Uruguay is preparing to commemorate this Tuesday the 50th anniversary of the coup that led to the civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985). President Luis Lacalle Pou and the three ex-presidents still alive since the democratic opening, Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990 and 1995-2000), Luis Lacalle Herrera (1990-1995) and José “Pepe” Mujica (2010-2015), will attend to an act at the seat of the legislative branch, which will be accompanied by a vigil in the outskirts organized by civil society.
The last session of the Senate before the dissolution of the Chambers, on the morning of June 27, 1973, was recreated on Monday starting at 10:30 p.m. Images from that night were projected on the dome of the venue. Then representatives of all the political parties and of the three powers of the State, as well as relatives of senators of the time and journalists of that time, sang the national anthem in the Hall of the Lost Steps into which the military broke five decades ago.
The façade of the legislative palace was then illuminated with the colors of the Uruguayan flag and the words “Forever Democracy”, the phrase chosen to mark the date. At midnight, a group of social activists and unions invited to light hundreds of candles in the surroundings of the legislative headquarters located in Montevideo.
Activities and partial stoppage
Half a century after that pivotal day, different Uruguayan institutions organized activities in tribute to those who resisted State terrorism. From the academy, around the officially declared in 2014 as “Day of Resistance and Defense of Democracy”, the University of the Republic organizes seminars, round tables, exhibitions and tours since the beginning of the month.
Express politicians who passed through the Cabildo prison, when it functioned as a detention and torture center, have presented the initiative “Flights to Freedom” since Sunday, under the orders of the plastic artist Mercedes Perlas. The work shows two hundred birds, one for each woman who passed through that place between 1968 and 1977, fluttering over the canvas and enclosing the condor sewn into the mural.
The PIT-CNT workers’ union, which recently held an act in tribute to José D’Elía, the “leader” of the general strike that lasted 15 days after the coup, called for a partial strike with mobilization for the morning of Tuesday. The president of the trade union, Marcelo Abdala, explained that “since 1964 the labor movement that was building its organic unity decided that if there was a coup, it would face it with a general strike, with occupation of the workplaces.”
Paying tribute to these workers “means working day by day to strengthen the unity, organization and class consciousness of the workers, to move towards a more just and democratic society, without exploitation or discrimination of any kind,” Abdala said. The Minister of Labor, Pablo Mieres, questioned the strike measure and maintained that he cannot find an explanation for it.
intense june
The month of June is being particularly active in terms of human rights in Uruguay. Five disappeared detainees buried in military premises were identified. The remains of a woman, found on June 6 in an Army unit, were sent this Monday to the Laboratory of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) in the province of Córdoba for identification. Also this month, on June 2, two Uruguayan retired soldiers were sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison for crimes against humanity.
In compliance with judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Uruguayan State made two public acknowledgments of its illegitimate actions during the past de facto regime. The most recent act of reparation was on June 15, when he admitted the extrajudicial execution of the three “April Girls”, as well as two related forced disappearances. In 2012 he had assumed responsibility for the disappearance in 1976 of the Argentine María Claudia García, daughter-in-law of the poet Juan Gelman.
197 disappeared and thousands of detainees
The last dictatorship in Uruguay began on June 27, 1973 when then President Juan María Bordaberry decreed the closure of Parliament with the support of the armed forces. But the coup had been brewing since February, when many soldiers rose up against the appointment of a minister.
It was in the 1960s that the urban guerrilla Movement for National Liberation-Tupamaros (MLN-T) emerged, among other left-wing groups inspired by the Cuban Revolution. The armed struggle actions increased the weight of the military in political life, in a Cold War context to which Uruguay, like the rest of the South American Southern Cone, was no stranger.
The democratic opening of the 1980s in the region also occurred in Uruguay. After an agreed exit with the military, on March 1, 1985, the country closed a dark period in its history, which resulted in tens of thousands of opponents imprisoned, banned, and exiled. Officially, 197 people disappeared due to actions attributed to the Uruguayan State between 1968 and 1985, the vast majority detained in Argentina within the framework of the Condor Plan.
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