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Civil Society and Political Representation in Latin America (2010-2015) pp 167–192Cite as

Participation and Representation in Uruguay: Challenges for Social Mobilization in a Party-Centered Society

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Abstract

In the era of audience democracy, Uruguay retains certain elements that were typical of party democracy to a much greater extent than other countries in the region. In fact, party democracy was much stronger in Uruguay to begin with. In contrast to other Latin American experiences characterized by the citizenry’s disaffection and estrangement from political parties and in which light and fleeting identifications have replaced the solid and lasting identities of the past, Uruguay offers the atypical landscape of a party-centered society, that is, a society in which parties play a key role not just in organizing political competition but also in producing and reproducing political identities.

In order to explore the relationship between political representation and social mobilization in contemporary Uruguay, we start with a brief description of political parties’ roles within political dynamics and in terms of the constitution of political identities. We then explore the realignment process that took place in the extremely stable Uruguayan party system as a new party emerged in the 1960s. The Frente Amplio brought a novel way of managing social tensions, and it consequently changed the prevailing relationship between social mobilization and political representation. Lastly, we observe changes and continuities in the links between society and the political system as the Frente Amplio moved from the opposition to the government: rapprochements, gaps and (relatively failed or successful) attempts to bridge them, the creation of novel spaces for interaction, and the transformation and expansion of repertoires of action.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The highest figures in the region were found in Ecuador (56%), Uruguay and Bolivia (55%), and Nicaragua (52%). These were the only countries where this perception was shared by more than half the citizenry, and at the time the survey was conducted, they all had leftist parties in power.

  2. 2.

    70% of Uruguayans declared themselves “very” or “rather” satisfied. The regional average is 37%, and in just three countries other than Uruguay, those satisfied exceeded 50%: Ecuador (60%) and Argentina and the Dominican Republic (54%) (Latinobarómetro 2015a).

  3. 3.

    Average electoral participation in the 82 presidential elections held in Latin America between 1995 and 2014 was 69.5% of registered citizens; the lowest figures were found in Guatemala (46.6%) and Colombia (47%) (Latinobarómetro 2015a).

  4. 4.

    According to survey data, 82% of Uruguayans trust that electoral processes in their country are clean; Chileans (67%) follow far behind. The regional average is 47%, with Mexico (26%) placed in the opposite extreme. As for the belief in government transparency, Uruguay ranks first with 61%, followed by Ecuador (59%) and the Dominican Republic (56%). The regional average is 36%, with Brazil (16%) ranking last (cf. Latinobarómetro 2015a).

  5. 5.

    Universal male suffrage dates back to 1912, and women were enfranchised in 1932.

  6. 6.

    Bipartisan competition did not produce alternation: the Partido Colorado uninterruptedly controlled the executive between 1865 and 1959 and again from 1966 and until the 1973 coup, while the Partido Nacional led a single administration. Throughout the period, however, both parties maintained basic public policy agreements and shared access to state positions and resources.

  7. 7.

    In contrast, the presence of the “parties of ideas” (mainly socialist and communist) that emerged in the early twentieth century was for decades barely more than symbolic. Their growth is in fact quite recent; it dates back to the 1970s and 1980s, when they eventually converged into the Frente Amplio.

  8. 8.

    Similarly, Chávez (2007) refers to the Uruguayan society as “the most statist one in Latin America,” characterized by the presence of “defense mechanisms” that have been absent in other countries. These take the form of a unified union confederation, in addition to a housing federation (FUCVAM) that, in alliance with the then-in-opposition Frente Amplio, managed to contain the privatization wave within relatively narrow limits. (Castro, Fry & Menéndez 2012).

  9. 9.

    Batllismo was the developmentalist doctrine that incarnated in the policies of José Batlle y Ordóñez (1856–1929), a historic Colorado leader that is considered to be the father of the modern Uruguayan welfare state. His strongly secular vision combined nationalizing and interventionist policies with advanced social legislation and held education as the key in equalizing social conditions. Its horizon was an urban, integrated, and predominantly middle-class society.

  10. 10.

    Even today, Uruguay has the most equal income distribution in the region, as measured by the Gini coefficient (0.379 for 2014). Cf. Cepalstat, in http://estadisticas.cepal.org/cepalstat/WEB_CEPALSTAT/Portada.asp.

  11. 11.

    Yet another Uruguayan originality, as early as 1917 the representative system started to be supplemented by highly institutionalized mechanisms of direct democracy. During the 1990s and early 2000s, these instruments were assiduously used by social movements supported by the then-in-opposition Frente Amplio.

  12. 12.

    Renamed Movimiento de Participación Popular-Tupamaros (Movement of Popular Participation-Tupamaros), this sector would enter the Frente Amplio in 1989 and would yield the coalition’s second president, José “Pepe” Mujica, as well as many of his administration’s high officials. Its evolution can therefore be analyzed as a case of successful adaptation (by “genetic mandate”) from clandestine formation to political party (Martí I. Puig et al. 2013).

  13. 13.

    After democracy was restored in 1985, the PC obtained the presidency three times (with Julio María Sanguinetti in 1985–1990 and 1995–2000 and with Jorge Batlle in 2000–2005), the PN once (with Luis Alberto Lacalle in 1990–1995), and the FA ruled uninterruptedly for three periods starting in 2005, with Tabaré Vázquez in 2005–2010 and again since 2015 and José Mujica in 2010–2015.

  14. 14.

    Five parties currently have representation in the lower chamber of the congress: the FA (50 representatives), the PN (32), the PC (13), the Independent Party (PI) (3), and Asamblea Popular (AP) (1). Four of them are also represented in the senate: FA (16), PN (10), PC (4), and PI (1). Cf. https://parlamento.gub.uy.

  15. 15.

    In order to differentiate it from its extreme varieties, we define moderate multipartism as a system in which competition includes between three and five effective parties. In our case, these are parties that are coalitional in nature, that is, highly factionalized internally.

  16. 16.

    In 2009, José “Pepe” Mujica won in a runoff election against the PN after obtaining 48% of the vote in the first round; similarly in 2014, Tabaré Vázquez won in a runoff election against the PN candidate after reaping 47.8% of the vote in the first round.

  17. 17.

    Data from the Observatory of Political Parties of Latin America, available in http://americo.usal.es/oir/opal/indicadores.htm#Uruguay. The 2004 peak reflects the last growth spurt of the FA.

  18. 18.

    Still today, after more than a decade in the government, programmatic debate on both domestic and international political issues is constant within the FA. See, for instance, the document on international affairs recently submitted by various political forces that take part in the coalition at the FA’s National Government Group (Agrupación Nacional de Gobierno) (LD, 6/5/16).

  19. 19.

    According to a recent survey, 53% of FA congressional representatives view “compliance with the party program” as a legislator’s primary role. The proportion of representatives who share this view is 11% among Nacionalistas, for whom “promoting policies or legislation according to the priorities of public opinion” ranks highest, and 20% among Colorados, who give top priority to “representing sectors whose voice is heard the least in the political system.” The proportion of frenteamplistas who shared that view, however, had been as high as 74% in 2007 (Moraes 2014).

  20. 20.

    The FA’s Political Conduct Tribunal imposes sanctions – mostly suspensions – on members who disobey party decisions, which in the case of legislators include congressional caucus mandates. A recent example of such enforcement was that of representative Víctor Semproni, who was suspended as a party member for 60 days for promoting the nomination of a municipal candidate and list had not been endorsed by the party (LD, 17/03/16).

  21. 21.

    The unorganized popular sectors, historically encapsulated by the traditional parties’ clientelistic machineries, would much later become a part of the FA support base.

  22. 22.

    According to Lorenzoni and Pérez (2013: 83), between 1971 and 2009, “FA programs lost leftist content in a gradual but systematic way; however, this shift does not correlate with an increase in right-wing content, but with the increase in a type of content that we will call ‘neutral’ in ideological terms [such as appeals to growth, modernization and the fight against corruption]. Secondly, changes can also be observed in the issues that each program emphasizes, although some themes stay constant over time, such as those related to the increase in social spending and state provision of welfare.” The authors point out that “the loss of leftist content […] was not homogenous across policy areas […] the decrease in leftist proposals in the economic sphere and the relative stability of the leftist positions in the area of social policy stand out” (Ibid: 98). Consistently with this, on the night when he was elected as the mayor of Montevideo, Tabaré Vázquez sought to reassure citizens that he was not coming to offer “magic solutions” and that his policies would be “absolutely gradualist, except on two issues: the fight against corruption and against poverty” (EP-Spain, 2/11/99).

  23. 23.

    Although a majority of young people still support the FA (EO, 3/11/14), their participation in the party’s internal life is quite limited.

  24. 24.

    Needless to say, the view of distance as a problem is largely the result of a misunderstanding – which is however constitutive of representation, the crisis of which has been systematically denounced since the very beginnings of the representative system. At its root lies the illusion of representation as the linear, undistorted transmission of a will that is fully constituted independently from and outside of the relation of representation (cf. Pousadela 2006).

  25. 25.

    In fact, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Uruguay is one of only 16 (out of 141) surveyed countries that enjoy full trade union freedoms (cf. ITUC Global Rights Index, in http://www.ituc-csi.org/).

  26. 26.

    The PIT-CNT trade union confederation was formed in the final months of the dictatorship, out of the unification of the PIT (Workers’ Interunion Plenary), which had been constituted in 1983 within the legal framework established by the dictatorship, and the original CNT, which had been banned and persecuted. The strength of trade unionism lies, at least in part, in the organization of the workers’ movement in a single federation that finds great acceptance among the citizenry: as emphasized by Oscar Bottinelli, “if the PIT-CNT declares a strike, it is really a national strike, a total strike […] the country becomes paralyzed” (Cf. Interview in http://www.factum.uy/analisis/2012/ana120210.php, 10/02/12).

  27. 27.

    In 2014, for instance, 9 of the 14 PIT-CNT leaders were candidates to deputies and senators on the FA ticket (Subrayado, 19/09/14).

  28. 28.

    Although, of course, this is the dominant view among the center-right opposition, which tends to overstate trade union influence on the FA in the same measure that it fears it. Thus, while former president Luis Alberto Lacalle (PN) denounced the existence of a “civic union” government (Búsqueda, 10/10/15), former president Julio María Sanguinetti (PC) stated: “We used to say that the PIT-CNT was a trade union arm of the Frente Amplio. Today it is the other way around: […] the Frente Amplio is a political arm of the true power, which lies with the PIT-CNT” (EO, 20/09/15).

  29. 29.

    On the characteristics of this relationship that combines ideological affinity and functional autonomy, see the statements by Fernando Pereira, leader of the PIT-CNT, in Búsqueda, 10/10/15.

  30. 30.

    Negotiations toward the signature of the global Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) were suspended after the PIT-CNT called its first 24-h general strike in 7 years (EP, 11/06/15) and in view of the deep crack that this initiative had opened within the FA itself (EP, 8/09/15). The same happened with the presidential decree declaring the “essential character” of education, which curtailed teachers’ right to strike and was reversed following strikes and demonstrations by the trade unions of the sector (which this time refused to even listen to the conciliatory calls of the PIT-CNT) (EP, 24/08/15).

  31. 31.

    The expression comes from the homonymous documentary produced by the Interdisciplinary Nucleus Critical Thinking in Latin America and Collective Subjects (UdelaR), available in https://vimeo.com/104811427.

  32. 32.

    The status of trade unionism as a social movement is no doubt debatable. Unions are structures for corporate representation; nevertheless, they can also be a part of social movements advocating for rights, as it has happened several times over the past decade in Uruguay. In this context, we think of them as “social movements” in the broadest sense of the term, that is, as social actors or expressions of social conflict.

  33. 33.

    The earliest left-wing detachment from the Frente Amplio coalition took place in 2006 and resulted in the foundation of a new party, Asamblea Popular (Popular Assembly).

  34. 34.

    This should be differentiated from the anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialist “popular bloc” of the origins.

  35. 35.

    The exception to this was the only issue that was subjected to two (failed) plebiscites, in 1989 and 2009: the repeal of the Law on the Expiration of the Punitive Claims of the State, which blocked trials for human rights violations committed during the dictatorship.

  36. 36.

    So far the PIT-CNT spokespeople have minimized the importance of the new actor, noting that “it is not a federation but a grouping of small groups” and challenging it to “make a mobilization like the one we are planning for November 12 and then we’ll talk” (LR21, 8/11/15).

  37. 37.

    See its May 1 proclamation in https://goo.gl/PhxUQ3. The ideological argument was rejected by the president of the Federation of Paper and Cardboard Recycling Workers (Federación de Obreros Papeleros y Cartoneros), a member of the PIT-CNT, with the following words: “To our left there’s nothing. Do not try to divide us on that” (LD, 2/05/16).

  38. 38.

    The key demand of the human rights movement – the end of impunity – has had a different fate, as it remains unsolved.

  39. 39.

    In the twofold sense of “new rights” and rights that attract the support of younger generations, in some cases with relative independence from party identification.

  40. 40.

    See in this sense the recorded testimony of Néstor Perdomo (ANP), who states that the opposition between political parties and social movements has been a constant over the past few decades, regardless of who leads the government (https://vimeo.com/104811427).

  41. 41.

    It should be noted that this dispute is also apparent in the field of social movements. An example of this is the argument made by Anahit Aharonian, of Espacio Memorias para la Paz (Space Memories for Peace), against the fragmentation of the human rights struggle in claims for “little rights” for this or that group, which defies the political discourse that states that “there are no enemies anymore, there are adversaries” when “we know that there is an issue of class struggle, that the capitalist system is the exploitation of man by man” (https://vimeo.com/104811427).

  42. 42.

    What is a “massive march” in Uruguay today? Which causes can result in one? The ones that were described as such in recent journalistic headlines happened to gather between a few hundreds or thousands and several tens of thousands of demonstrators. Among the most massive ones in recent years were the rallies organized by the Movement No a la Baja, which brought together some 50,000 people in October 2014, and the march summoned by human rights organizations in demand for truth, memory, and justice, which summoned about 100,000 in May 2015.

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  1. CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Inés M. Pousadela

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    Adrián Albala

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M. Pousadela, I. (2018). Participation and Representation in Uruguay: Challenges for Social Mobilization in a Party-Centered Society. In: Albala, A. (eds) Civil Society and Political Representation in Latin America (2010-2015). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67801-6_9

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