Former Uraguay dictator Bordaberry dead at 83

[Judi Lynn]

Former Uraguay dictator Bordaberry dead at 83
The Associated Press

Date: Sunday Jul. 17, 2011 1:50 PM ET

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Former President-turned-dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry, whose self-coup launched more than a decade of military rule in Uruguay, died Sunday in his home where he was serving a sentence for leading efforts to eliminate leftist dissent in the 1970s.

Bordaberry had been suffering from breathing problems and other illnesses that kept him from serving the 30-year sentence in prison. His death -- on his 83rd birthday -- was confirmed to The Associated Press by his son, Sen. Pedro Bordaberry.

A wealthy conservative landowner, Bordaberry was elected president in 1971 during a chaotic time in Uruguay, when wealthy elites and leftist Tupamaro guerrillas both saw armed revolution as a real path to power.

The Tupamaros were already crushed when Uruguayans awoke to tanks surrounding the legislative palace on the cold winter day of June 27, 1973. The military had become so powerful that Bordaberry had to give up control in order to survive politically. Rather than lose a minor political fight in Congress, he suspended the constitution, banned political parties, ordered tanks into the streets and ruled by decree until the generals ousted him anyway three years later. Democracy wasn't restored until 1985.

More:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110717/president-of-uraguay-dies-at-83-110717/

LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=102&topic_id=4924185&mesg_id=4924185

~~~~~
Bordaberry Wikipedia:

~snip~
Bordaberry was elected president as the Colorado candidate in 1971. It has since emerged that he only won due to considerable electoral fraud.<1> He took office in 1972 in the midst of an institutional crisis caused by the authoritarian rule of Pacheco and the terrorist threat. Bordaberry, at the time, was a very minor political figure; he exercised little independent standing as a successor to Pacheco other than being Pacheco's handpicked successor. He continued Pacheco's authoritarian methods, suspending civil liberties, banning labor unions, and imprisoning and killing opposition figures . He also appointed military officers to most leading government positions.

~snip~
Premature end of term of Presidential officeIn 1976, the military, preferring to rule through Alberto Demicheli, already serving in the government and a figure at first thought to be more accommodating to their wishes, ousted Bordaberry from office. The military claimed, whether accurately or not, that Bordaberry wanted to dissolve permanently the political parties and set up a corporatist state according to a pattern with little precedent in Uruguayan history. Bordaberry's anticipated 5-year term of office, 1972-1977, was thus curtailed by the military.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Mar%C3%ADa_Bordaberry

[Judi Lynn]

1. NIXON: "BRAZIL HELPED RIG THE URUGUAYAN ELECTIONS," 1971

NIXON: "BRAZIL HELPED RIG THE URUGUAYAN ELECTIONS," 1971

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 71
Edited by Carlos Osorio <[e-mail]>
Director, Southern Cone Documentation Project
Phone: 202 / 994-7061
20 June 2002

Research and editing assistance: Kathleen Costar, National Security Archive
Research and translation assistance: Dr. Ariela Peralta, SERPAJ Uruguay, CEJIL USA

Newly declassified documents detail the Nixon administration's broad-gauged efforts to prevent a victory by the leftist “Frente Amplio” in the Uruguayan presidential elections of 1971. The documents show that Nixon was aware of – and may in fact have been complicit in – Brazilian efforts to influence the election results. Six weeks ago, an Associated Press report by Ron Kampeas, citing a newly declassified document from the Nixon collection at the National Archives, first revealed that during a meeting with then British Prime Minister Edward Heath President Nixon admitted, “Brazil helped rig the Uruguayan elections.”

Responding to these new revelations, the National Security Archive’s Southern Cone Documentation Project today releases 15 additional documents pertaining to U.S. policy toward Uruguay during this period. The documents show that the U.S. was concerned that leftist groups not succeed in Uruguay as they had in Chile the previous year with the election of Socialist candidate Salvador Allende. This concern was shared by Brazil as well as Argentina, whose military intelligence components were carrying on close consultations on – and had previously had an agreement to intervene in – Uruguay's political affairs. The U.S. Embassy recommended overt and covert activities to counter Frente publications and also suggested cooperation between Brazil and Argentina to support Uruguay's internal security operations.

Brazilian President Emílio Garrastazu Médici visited Washington on December 7-9, 1971, two weeks after the Uruguayan elections with the outcome still uncertain. Garrastazu Médici held several meetings with President Nixon, the National Security Council adviser Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State William Rogers and the soon to be Deputy Director of the CIA, Vernon Walters. In several of the memos reporting conversations with the Brazilian President, Richard Nixon mentions Brazil’s help in influencing Uruguay’s elections. Henry Kissinger highlights Garrastazu Médici’s support of the "Nixon Doctrine" in Latin America. Under the doctrine, a nation like Brazil, was to be a surrogate regional power acting in U.S. interests.

Uruguay held its elections on November 28, 1971. “Frente Amplio” leaders complained of U.S. and Brazilian-supported harassment of its candidates and campaign. On February 15, 1972, the electoral tribunal announced the victory of Juan María Bordaberry of the incumbent Colorado Party with 41% of the vote, only a few thousand votes more than the Blanco Party candidate who received 40%. To the Embassy’s relief, the “Frente Amplio” ended up in a distant third with only 18% of the vote.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB71/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Concerning his brutal actions against his countrymen/women, from the original link:

~snip~
A peace commission found in 2003 that the dictatorship killed 175 leftist political activists, 26 of them in clandestine torture centres.

Earlier, the Tupamaros also committed killings and other crimes after taking up arms in 1963 against democratically elected governments, and many of the guerrillas who weren't killed served long prison terms. Mujica, for one, spent more than a decade behind bars.

Investigative judges linked Bordaberry to the abductions and killings in May 1976 of leftist Sen. Zelmar Michelini and House leader Hector Gutierrez of the traditional National Party, prominent lawmakers who were seized from their homes in exile in Buenos Aires. Their bullet-riddled bodies and those of suspected Uruguayan guerrillas William Whitelaw and Rosario Barredo were found days later.

Human rights groups maintain they were killed as part of Operation Condor, a secret pact between South America's dictatorships to eliminate political opponents who had fled to neighbouring countries.

Remember he was wholly approved by the U.S. President at the time.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Don't forget the tool the U.S. sent to Uruguay to "interrogate" political prisoners, Dan Mitrione.

Wikipedia:

Daniel A. Mitrione (August 4, 1920 – August 10, 1970) was an Italian-born<1> American police officer, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a United States government advisor for the Central Intelligence Agency in Latin America.

~snip~
CareerMitrione was a police officer in Richmond, Indiana, from 1945 to 1947 and joined the FBI in 1959. In 1960 he was assigned to State Department's International Cooperation Administration, going to South American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." A. J. Langguth, a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon, claimed that Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them<2> Langguth also claimed that older police officers were replaced "when the CIA and the U.S. police advisers had turned to harsher measures and sterner men."<3> and that under the new head of the U.S. Public Safety program in Uruguay, Dan Mitrione, the United States "introduced a system of nationwide identification cards, like those in Brazil… torture had become routine at the Montevideo (police) jefatura."<4>

~snip~
Uruguayan posting and deathIn this period the Uruguayan government, led by the Colorado Party, had its hands full with a collapsing economy, labor and student strikes, and the Tupamaros, a left-wing urban guerilla group. On the other hand, Washington feared a possible victory during the elections of the Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition, on the model of the victory of the Unidad Popular government in Chile, led by Salvador Allende, in 1970.<4> The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training. It is claimed that torture had already been practised since the 1960s, but Dan Mitrione was reportedly the man who made it routine.<6> He is quoted as having said once: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect."<7> Former Uruguayan police officials and CIA operatives claimed Mitrione had taught torture techniques to Uruguayan police in the cellar of his Montevideo home, including the use of electrical shocks delivered to his victims' mouths and genitals.<8> He also helped train foreign police agents in the United States in the context of the Cold War. It has been alleged that he used homeless people for training purposes, who were allegedly executed once they had served their purpose.<9>

As the use of torture allegations grew and the tensions in Uruguay escalated, Mitrione was eventually kidnapped by the Tupamaros on July 31, 1970. They proceeded to interrogate him about his past and the intervention of the U.S. government in Latin American affairs. They also demanded the release of 150 political prisoners.<10>

~snip~
CommemorationThe Nixon Administration through spokesman Ron Ziegler affirmed that Mitrione's "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere."<16> His funeral was largely publicised by the U.S. media, and it was attended by, amongst others, David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon's secretary of state William Rogers. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit concert for his family in Richmond, Indiana.<17>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Mitrione

~~~~~
TO SAVE DAN MITRIONE NIXON ADMINISTRATION URGED
DEATH THREATS FOR URUGUAYAN PRISONERS

In Response Uruguayan Security Forces Launched Death Squads to Hunt and Kill Insurgents
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 324

By Carlos Osorio and Marianna Enamoneta
With the Collaboration of Clara Aldrighi

Posted – August 11, 2010

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2010 - Documents posted by the National Security Archive on the 40th anniversary of the death of U.S. advisor Dan Mitrione in Uruguay show the Nixon administration recommended a “threat to kill Sendic and other key MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed.” The secret cable from U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, made public here for the first time, instructed U.S. Ambassador Charles Adair: “If this has not been considered, you should raise it with the Government of Uruguay at once.”

The message to the Uruguayan government, received by the U.S. Embassy at 11:30 am on August 9, 1970, was an attempt to deter Tupamaro insurgents from killing Mitrione at noon on that day. A few minutes later, Ambassador Adair reported back, in another newly-released cable, that “a threat was made to these prisoners that members of the ‘Escuadrón de la Muerte’ (death squad) would take action against the prisoners’ relatives if Mitrione were killed.”

~snip~
“The documents reveal the U.S. went to the edge of ethics in an effort to save Mitrione—an aspect of the case that remained hidden in secret documents for years,” said Carlos Osorio, who directs the National Security Archive’s Southern Cone project. “There should be a full declassification to set the record straight on U.S. policy to Uruguay in the 1960’s and 1970’s.”

“In the aftermath of Dan Mitrione’s death, the Uruguayan government unleashed the illegal death squads to hunt and kill insurgents,” said Clara Aldrighi, professor of history at Uruguay’s Universidad de la República, and author of “El Caso Mitrione” (Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce, 2007). “The U.S. documents are irrefutable proof that the death squads were a policy of the Uruguayan government, and will serve as key evidence in the death squads cases open now in Uruguay’s courts,” Osorio added. "It is a shame that the U.S. documents are writing Uruguayan history. There should be declassification in Uruguay as well,” stated Aldrighi, who collaborated in the production of this briefing book.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB324/index.htm