Intellectuals and Left Politics in Uruguay, 1958–2006 Frustrated Dialogue
Stephen Gregory
Stephen Gregory is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His recent research into culture and politics includes papers on Mario Benedetti, Jorge Luis Borges, and the collaboration of Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder.
Beginning in the year Uruguayans elected a different party into government for the first time in nearly a century, the author examines intellectuals’ role in the Uruguayan left’s drive toward unity and effectiveness. Discussion focuses on fragmentation and impotence on the left; frustrated attempts at left unity in the 1960s; the creation of the centre-left Broad Front in 1971; and the defeat of all left endeavours and all dialogue in the 1973 military coup – a prelude to a twelve-year dictatorship in which the military substituted themselves for intellectuals.
The story continues in 1985, reversing the earlier trend in a record of dispersal and diversity. The author details the initial post-authoritarian anarchic cultural outburst – part celebration, part frustration; intellectuals’ role in the disputes that accompanied the Broad Front’s move from democratic socialism to social democracy, and from opposition to government in 2004; and recent excursions into the long-standing Uruguayan obsession with its identity and viability as an independent nation.
This book is essential reading for all those interested in interplay between intellectuals and politics in Latin America; changes in the Latin American left since the 1960s; and the leftward drift of elected governments in the Southern Cone.
