Latin America has changed dramatically in the last decade. The familiar dictatorial regimes of the past have given way to new governments promising radical reform and supported by mass popular movements. The presidential victory of Hugo Chávez in 1998 was followed by Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva's electoral triumph in Brazil in 2003, Evo Morales's ascent to the Bolivian presidency in 2005 and the inauguration of radical bishop Fernando Lugo in Paraguay in 2008.
The recent election of José Mujica as president of Uruguay appears to continue the pattern. His credentials are impeccable; a member of the Tuparmaros urban guerrilla movement in the 1960s, he was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years by the military regime that took power in 1971. In 2005 he joined the government of Ramon Tabaré Vázquez, the elected president who did not belong to the Blanco and Colorado parties who had shared power for nearly a century. Like Mujica, Tabaré belongs to the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), a centre-left party formed in 1971, just before the military takeover. Having served as minister of agriculture, Mujica was nominated as the Frente's 2009 presidential candidate in what was seen as a victory for the party's left wing.
The Frente's support owes much to Tabaré's success in reviving an Uruguayan economy that was on the verge of collapse in 2001-02. Between 2004 and 2009 Uruguay's GDP rose by 30%. Tabaré had promised to "make the earth tremble", enacting structural reforms, improving the wages and conditions of workers and prosecuting those responsible for human rights violations under the military. And he did enact popular measures like the Plan Ceibal which promised a computer for every schoolchild and 10,000 free eye operations carried out at the Saint Bois hospital.
Mujica's presence in the cabinet was seen by many as a guarantee of its radical credentials. But the promised major reforms did not materialise. In fact Tabaré, like Lula in Brazil and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, opted to open the Uruguayan economy to the global market. The major beneficiary was foreign capital; foreign investment totalled $2.4bn in 2008 compared with $283m annually between 1999 and 2003. The economic growth of the last five years has much to do with Scandinavian and US investment in forestry, Brazilian investment in meat refrigeration plants and Argentine and Chilean control of soya production. As minister for agriculture, Mujica oversaw and approved this strategy.
Nonetheless, in the second round of the presidential election Mujica and the Frente Amplio won a convincing 52.6% of the votes against 43.3% for the rightwing ticket headed by Luis Alberto Lacalle. The Frente enjoys the support of majority of the poor and the working class in Uruguay, and it is well organised at the grass roots. That support also derives from the reputation of the Tupamaros movement of the 60s, which the Frente – and Mujica in particular – has inherited.
The issue of impunity, the decision to place a time limit on the prosecution on those responsible for repression and murder under the military regime (1971-85), remains as contentious an issue in Uruguay as in Chile and Argentina. In mid-October 100,000 people demonstrated in Montevideo, the capital, in support of a plebiscite to eliminate the time limit. The Frente Amplio did not support the Yes vote and the law remains in place.
Given its history, it was a strange decision for the Frente to take. Yet Mujica sees himself as a conciliator, a consensus politician. On the spectrum of the new left presidencies he is closer to Lula than to Chavez, whom he has publicly criticised. His models are not Venezuela or Bolivia, but New Zealand and Finland, social democracies in small countries that have consistently pursued consensus.
Other than Álvaro Uribe in Colombia and Felipe Calderón in Mexico (and the newly elected rightwing president of Honduras), Latin America's governments are committed to social justice, nationalisation of key resources and a critical attitude towards the US. Yet they are by no means in agreement over their relationship with neo-liberalism and the global market. It seems likely that Mujica will continue the previous government's collaboration with foreign capital and the global system.
It is certainly an improvement on the crisis-ridden Uruguay of a decade ago. But it is far from the radical vision of change that was envisaged and fought for by the Tuparmaros guerrillas 40 years ago.
Mike González, professor of Latin American studies at the University of Glasgow.