Juan María Bordaberry

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**Juan María Bordaberry**
Term of Office:	March 1, 1972 – June 12, 1976
Predecessor:	Jorge Pacheco Areco
Successor:	Alberto Demicheli
Vice-president:	Jorge Sapelli
Date of Birth:	June 17, 1928
Place of Birth:	Montevideo
Profession:	Rancher
Political Party:	Colorado Party

Juan María Bordaberry Arocena is a Uruguayan statesman, who served as constitutional President from 1972 to 1973, when he dissolved the General Assembly and continued to rule as dictator until 1976, when disagreements with the military led to his deposition. On November 17, 2006 he was arrested in a case involving four deaths, including two of members of the General Assembly during the period of military rule in the 1970's.

Bordaberry was born in 1928 in Montevideo, Uruguay's capital. He was the heir to one of the largest ranches in the country. Initially, he belonged to the National Party, popularly known as the Blancos, and was elected to the Senate on the Blanco ticket. In 1964, however, he formed the Liga Nacional de Accion Ruralista (Spanish for "National Rural Action League"), and in 1969 joined the Colorado Party. That year he was appointed to the Cabinet, and held a variety of portfolios between 1969 to 1971.

Bordaberry was elected President in 1972, in the midst of an economic crisis and Tupamaro insurgency. He resorted to authoritarian measures in an attempt to deal with the situation, suspending civil liberties and banning left-wing labor unions. He also appointed military officers to most leading government positions. By the end of 1972, the Tupamaros, who had brought terror into de civil population, were effectively defeated, taking with them almost a hundred lives of innocent soldiers, politicians and civilians.

In early 1973, with the guerrilla destroyed, both traditional parties, the Colorado Party and the National Party (Blancos), began to speculate on forcing new anticipated elections and take Bordaberry out of the government. The Blancos were moved by the alleged fraud in those last elections, and the more traditional Colorados (amongst whom was Mr. Sanguinetti himself), who had seen Bordaberry rise in their party in a few years time, wanted him out as well. In February, when he intended to appoint a close friend, though advanced in age, as Defense Minister, the Military opposed, since they preferred a younger and more vigorous person for the job. As Bordaberry was constitutional president, he wanted his legitimate powers to be respected, and called for a demonstration of the civil population to support him and his authority. As leaders of both parties felt this occasion could bring his resignation, they asked people not to go, and so just his family and closest friends went to the rally. It was at that moment that he understood the military rule was inevitable, and decided to make it possible for them to have the power under his supervision, to prevent abuses on their side. Bordaberry carried out a self-coup on June 27, 1973. He dissolved Congress and suspended the Constitution. Labour unions and left parties celebrated the coup and welcomed the military government. For the next three years, he ruled by decree with the assistance of a National Security Council.

In 1976, Bordaberry, who had come to understand the cause of this crisis was the ambition of the politicians who had tried to overthrow him, proposed abolishing the political parties, to conform a new society based upon respect, Christian values and patriotic love. The military, preferring to rule through sympathizers in both the Colorado and Blanco parties, ousted Bordaberry from office on June 12. He then returned to his ranch.

Some would argue that, in some ways, Bordaberry's identification, albeit checkered, with the military, and the close links between his faction of the Colorados and the military, mirror similar elements present in the Colorado Party's founder, Fructuoso Rivera. Others would argue that Bordaberry's collaboration with the military was a repudiation of Colorado party ideals.

Pedro Bordaberry, a son of Juan Maria Bordaberry, was Tourism Minister in the government of Jorge Batlle.

[edit] Arrest

On November 17, 2006, following an order by judge Roberto Timbal, Bordaberry was placed under arrest along with his former foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco [1]. He was arrested in connection with the 1976 assassination of two left-leaning Colorado legislators, Senator Zelmar Michelini and House leader Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz. The assassinations took place in Buenos Aires but the prosecution argued they had been part of Operation Condor, in which the military regimes of Uruguay and Argentina coordinated actions against dissidents. Timbal ruled that since the killings took place outside Uruguay, they were not covered by an amnesty enacted after the return of civilian rule in 1985.

Bordaberry's arrest was generally met with satisfaction and regarded as the end of impunity in Uruguay, a country considered by some to have lagged behind other Latin American nations in this matter [2]. On the other hand, members of Bordabery's Colorado Party, notably former president Julio María Sanguinetti, have warned against singling out acts of state-sponsored terrorism and leaving illegal activities by the Tupamaro guerrilla protected by the Amnesty law of the early 1980s.^{[citation needed]}