THE Uruguayan National Party government, elected in 1990, Is planning a wave of privatizations in the framework of the country's integration into the unified market of the Southern
Cone (Mercosur), which has already been voted for by parliament. The left, grouped in the Broad Front (FA, Frente
Amplio), and supported by the opposition Colorado party', has launched a signature campaign to demand the holding of a referendum on the privatization plans. This requires gaining the signatures of a quarter of the electorate (630,000 people)
by mid-February 1992.
After a month of campaigning, 12,000 signatures had been collected?. International Viewpoint spoke to Ernesto Herrera, a member of the Socialist Workers Party (PST, Uruguayan section of the Fourth International) about the current situation in Uruguay.
RUGUAY, like Argentina,
U has experienced an unprecedented economic crisis since the end of the 1980s.
What is the current situation?
The social and economic project of the bourgeoisie is currently entirely determined by the integration into Mercosur, which will come into force in 1995, gradually suppressing all the customs barriers between Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and
Paraguay. Industry, but also agriculture and cattle farming — Uruguay is a big meat exporter, with 14 million cattle — are going to undergo a process of emment employees have been dismissed, the public sector remains stable in Uruguay — again, such dismissals have to be approved by Parliament. Meanwhile, the government has offered incentives equivalent to one year's salary to those who agree to leave, but only 6% of government workers, most of them near to retirement age, have accepted. The majority of people prefer to have a stable situation, even if it involves working in bad conditions for low pay.
Moreover, a sector of the bourgeoisie is
In fact, unemployment has grown over the past six months and affects 120,000 people — which might seem derisory, but the Uruguayan labour force is 1.3 million people (out of a total population of 3 million inhabitants). We are witnessing marked social deterioration, despite the relatively "low" inflation rate (80% a year). We do not have poverty comparable to that of the other countries of Latin America, but Uruguay is one of the places where the situation has comparatively deteriorated the most over the past 15 years.
Twenty years ago, Uruguay allocated 25% of its budget to education — illiteracy had totally disappeared - against 6% today. The system of public health, on which 2 million people depended, has been completely destroyed; all the doctors and nurses are trying to emigrate to the United States or to Europe because of low pay. In Montevideo, 70-80,000 people live in shanty towns.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) has recently published a report which has had a considerable impact in the country; 1. In Uruguay, since independence, power has traditionally been disputed between two bourgeois formations: the Colorado ("red") Party and the nationalist Blanco ("white" party), currently in power. 2. In 1989, a similar campaign collected enough signatures to demand a referendum against the amnesty granted by the goverment to military figures guilty of the violation of human rights under the dictatorship, but the vote proved negative.
reconversion. The street traders controversy
The Uruguayan debt has risen to $6 billion; with Chile and Colom- THE social crisis and the growth of unemployment have led an increasing number of Urubia, it is the most punctual country guayans to live from informal trade in the streets of the capital (see /V 220, January 20, 1992). when it comes to interest pay- They sell primarily contraband goods originating from Brazil (food, clothes, cigarettes and so ments - 27% of annual exports. on). The itinerant traders have become concentrated in the three commercial zones at the Currently, the government is sell- centre of Montevideo. ing off our gold reserves to pay the The FA municipality announced that it would leave nobody without work, but that it would debt. regulate the informal sector. It has drawn up a project which reduces the number of itinerant
The bourgeoisie also wants to traders to six per housing block in the centre (against 60 to 80 beforehand) and it has orgaimplement its project of "state nized permanent commercial centres outside the city centre for the others, investing around reform" concretely manifested by $600,000 in this. the privatizations in the public sec- The municipality has been under great pressure from the settled traders who are opposed tor. Unlike in Argentina or Brazil, to what they see as unfair competition. in Uruguay the project of privati- But the itinerant traders want to work in the centre, to gain more clients and so that people zation has had to be approved by can compare their prices with those of the settled traders. This has led a significant proportion parliament, which explains the of them to resist the pressures of the municipality and return to the city centre. limited extent of the changes up They are organized by three trade unions — one controlled by the Communist Party, the until now - but the plan was other by the traditional parties and the third by the MPP (Movement of Popular Participation). finally voted through some The latter has put forward an alternative project for self-regulation of numbers and for the sitmonths ago. ing of traders, and has issued a demand for amnesty for those traders convicted of breaking
For the moment, the bourgeoisie the new regulations — the mayor has rejected these two proposals. does not enjoy a sufficiently To enforce its regulations, the municipality has appealed to the police, who arrive in lorries, favourable relationship of forces overturn or steal goods, and arrest the traders. Since the installation of the civilian governto apply its neo-liberal project in a drastic manner, as Menem has done in Argentina. Unlike in the latter country, where 500,000 gov-
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International Viewpoint #224 • March 16, 1992
URUGUAY because of poor nourishment, 50% of children of school age are undersized and will have diminished learning abilities. In our country, we thought these phenomena were reserved for Central America, Bolivia or Ecuador. • Is there opposition to the government's privatization measures?
The FA, the alliance of all the forces of the left, voted against the "reform of the state" in parliament. On the other hand, all the parliamentary groups voted for the Mercosur integration, except for two deputies from the Movement of Popular Participation (MPP), one of the components
The FA is divided into 3 blocs: one is led by the Communist Party; another by the Uruguayan Socialist Party — which is not affiliated to the Second International; the third, the MPP, groups the radical and revolutionary left — the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement (MLN), the Party of the Victory of the People (PVP), the Socialist Workers Party (PST), the Eastern Revolutionary Movement(MRO) and some independents.
The FA gained 400,000 votes in the last elections in 1990, or 22% of the total vote, and won the municipality of Montevideo. The MPP had 50,000 votes. The FA put forward single candidates for the presidency, vice-presidency and municipalities, but each bloc had its own lists for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. • How does the FA administer the Montevideo municipality?
The FA won the municipality of the capital with 35% of the votes. The mayor, Tabaré Vasquez, is on the central committee of the Socialist Party. The people had many hopes in this new administration and expected serious social measures — above all in the areas of transport, health and housing — and a development of popular participation.
Today, after two years in power, the administration remains popular, although it has not achieved very much in the social field. The most popular measure has been the subsidizing of private transport enterprises to keep the price of tickets down.
Practically nothing has been done so far as housing is concerned. Popular participation and the development organization have absolutely not been
This "prudent" municipal administration on the part of the reformist sectors of the FA (no confrontation with private enterprise or the central government, "politics for all the citizens") is meant to show that this political formation is capable of governing in a healthy manner and of preserving order: the town hall of Montevideo is a shop window for the 1994
The FA administration has deliberately chosen not to use its control of the munici- pality as a centre for resistance to the neo liberal project of the central government. It wishes to approach 1994 with a stable social climate.
The FA has led a big campaign against corruption. The favourite slogan of the Montevideo municipality is that politics and ethics must go hand in hand. It has succeeded in leading an open "administration", something which is recognized by the people. From an economic point of view, the FA proposes an alternative project. But if it comes into government in 1994, it is going to have to run the country in the framework of the Mercosur economic union and with a well-advanced project of privatization and state reform, which it will be very difficult to reverse. • Does the Communist Party, the biggest party in the FA (it won 50% of the votes of this coalition by itself) still represent an important
It is almost certainly on the point of breaking up. The Uruguayan CP was one of the biggest in Latin America, but the crisis in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall have profoundly shaken it. Today, it is divided between an orthodox sector, which is in the minority, and a sector, which proposes to create a "democratic socialist party" with the Socialist Party.
Its crisis is very sharp in terms of militants, finances and apparatus. The relations between the different components of the FA are very tense because the dominant reformist sector (PC and PS) wants to come to power in 1994 under the theme of "government for all". Its members hope to develop a policy of broad alliances, which requires a watering down of political pro-
The revolutionary pole, centred in the MPP, is not in agreement with the management of the Montevideo municipality.
The confrontations with regard to the regulation of the itinerant traders (see box) and the divergences on the Mercosur have allowed certain sectors of the FA to present the MPP as an obstacle to their electoralist, reformist and gradual strategy. Some even want the FA to get rid of • Is a split of this type likely in the FA before the 1994 elections?
No, because there is not a sufficient relation of forces inside the FA. During the last congress of the FA, in August 1991, the MPP obtained nearly 30% of the delegates, arguing that the accumulation of forces would be achieved through a confrontation with the neo-liberal project of the government. • What about the trade union movement?
It is going through a very deep crisis, a fall in membership, and is experiencing numerous organizational problems. believe however that this is still one of the rare countries in Latin America where the single trade union federation, the National Confederation of Labour (CNT, controlled by the "renewer" sector of the CP and the Socialist Party) retains a big capacity for mobilization. Thus, in December 1991, a general strike of 36 hours — the fifth organized against this government -paralyzed practically all the sectors. This was in solidarity with the dockers strike against the privatization of the port of Montevideo, which lasted 20 days.
Recently, the biggest tyre factory in the country, which employs around 2,000 workers, wanted to close down and dismiss all its workers; following a strike, it reopened under workers control.
The deepening of the economic crisis has led to the development of popular urban movements; parallel with the conflict over itinerant traders in Montevideo, there were occupations of municipal land and of empty houses belonging to the big
Traditionally in Uruguay social movements were closely tied to political organizations, but today this mould is beginning to be broken.
Movements for housing, water, electricity, against the high cost of living mobilizations of women in the popular neighbourhoods are mushrooming, unlike the preceding period where the backbone of the popular movement was formed by the trade unions. The new sectors which are beginning to organize themselves (itinerant traders, youth, women) are not controlled by the bureaucratic apparatuses of the CP and the SP; they form, rather, the social base of the MPP. • In this context, what is the strategy of the MPP?
The MPP bases itself on the 1971 programme of the FA, which affirmed its democratic, popular and anti-imperialist nature and defended a policy of a break with the state and the dominant class. It follows a policy of fighting to win the leadership inside the FA. The MPP recognizes that the workers movement is on the defensive faced with the ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie, but it thinks that it is necessary to continue to take initiatives of confrontation with the latter. debates revolve primarily around the best manner of accumulating forces, and on what policy to adopt in relation to the municipality.
The last plenum of the FA decided that the next national central campaign, starting from March 1992, will be the collection of signatures to launch a referendum of popular initiative against the privatization plans adopted by parliament. *
3. Uruguay is a country which is 80% urban — half of its population lives in Montevideo. Outside of the plains devoted to cattle ranching, there are few peasants. There are small agricultural producers in the belt around Montevideo and in the north-east of the country, at the frontier with Brazil, where sugar cane and nce are grown.
Free trade and the
THE government of Salinas de Gortari has recently undertaken one of its most spectacular measures:
the reform of article 27 of the Mexican constitution.
These measures will certainly lead to a radical restructuring of Mexican agriculture and will have a dramatic impact on property relations in the countryside, particularly the ejidos.! This takes place in the framework of a larger reform of the state which involves widespread privatizations as well as the free-trade act with the United States.
A RTICLE 27 of the Mexican
constitution synthesized the nature of the Mexican Revolution and the regime that issued from it. On one hand it reflected the destruction of the state apparatus of the former dictator Porfirio Diaz and the depth of the peasant struggle for the land, while on the other hand it reflected the debate that took place after the military and political defeat of the peasant armies of Zapata and Villa.
The victorious generals understood that it was necessary to establish a social pact in order to seal and bring to a close the revolution. This pact was codified in article 27 of the constituent congress. The article instituted an agrarian reform based on the idea that all the soil and subsoil of the country is the property of the nation put at the disposal of the peasants.
The article summed up the contradictory character of the Mexican revolution: though the peasant armies had destroyed the bourgeois state of Porforio Diaz, they were not capable of erecting a new state on its ruins. This is why it was possible for a group of petty-bourgeois military figures to rebuild the bourgeois state. However, they were forced to recognize certain demands of the peasantry and to enter into a social pact that recognized a series of these peasant demands. Thus article 27 and, to a lesser extent, constitutional articles 3 and 124, reflect the uninterrupted character of the revolution of 1910-1917.2