This Thursday, April 14, the association that takes its name from the date, held an act of homage to “those who have fallen in defense of democratic institutions.” The former president of the Republic, Julio María Sanguinetti, attended the Plaza de la Bandera, as well as other leaders of the coalition: the former prosecutor and Colorado deputy Gustavo Zubía, and the senator and president of Cabildo Abierto (CA), Guillermo Domenech.
Sanguinetti’s link with this act is not accidental. It was at the beginning of his first term, when he appointed himself on April 14 as the “Day of the Fallen in the Struggle for the Defense of Democratic Institutions”in modification of the name that originally gave him the dictatorship in 1975 (“Day of the fallen in the fight against sedition”).
Nevertheless, in 2006, the presidency of Tabaré Vázquez repealed the Sanguinetti decree, and the act of April 14 ceased to be official. The former Colorado deputy and organizer of the initiative, Daniel García Pintos, referred to this in statements to Telemundo.
The “Day of the Fallen” is commemorated in the Plaza de la Bandera.
The word of former deputy Daniel García Pintos, organizer of the initiative. pic.twitter.com/FHI55HRIBc
– Telemundo (@TelemundoUY) April 14, 2022
“Tabaré Vázquez, in 2006, threw the national flag to the ground and we picked it up. In an act of rebellion, here, in this same square seventeen years ago, we came spontaneously. We didn’t have all this audio and film equipment. We sing the national anthem a capella with rain, wind and cold. And we did it and that’s where the 14th of April was founded”narrated.
Diego Battiste
Tribute in the Plaza de la Bandera for those who fell in defense of democratic institutions
In the act, García Pintos resumed his intention that the commemoration be official again. “The speech has to be made by a minister of the Executive Power or whoever the President of the Republic decides, because it is the State that must recognize what our dead did defending democratic institutions and the republic”he noted after the event.
As reported The Daily, The brand new Corriente Constructora Liberal group of the PC had sent a letter to Julio María Sanguinetti asking him to transmit the same request to Luis Lacalle Pou.
On the other hand, one of the most sensitive issues in the Plaza de la Bandera referred to the elderly prisoners and investigated for human rights violations. how did you register The Observer, there were children with signs that read: “My grandfather is my hero” either “My grandfather is not a “backpack” he is a Uruguayan soldier”.
Diego Battiste
Tribute in the Plaza de la Bandera for those who fell in defense of democratic institutions
“They can’t wait for a grandson at the school gate. That’s terrible”, lamented the ex-deputy. For Garcia Pintos, there are prisoners who did not commit “any crime because they are charged with common crimes that prescribed twenty years ago”. “But the same goes for prisoners while the investigations continue,” she added. And “since the process is slow, prisoners die”he concluded.
For him, the way to deal with this problem is “Look for a law that explains that it has to be in accordance with what the criminal code must have in order to be respected.” “It’s a bill, we have to make it a law —he added— but there is a majority today in parliament Y you have to put it to work”.
The celebration is held on April 14 because it was on that day in 1972 that the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement killed deputy commissioner Oscar Delega and his driver, agent Carlos Leites, on Rivera and Soca streets. Shortly after, an attack by the Tupamaros in Las Piedras killed Navy Lieutenant Commander Ernesto Motto; minutes later, the MLN killed former Undersecretary of the Interior Armando Acosta y Lara. The three murdered were accused of being part of the Death Squad.
This action generated a response from the Joint Forces and that same afternoon they killed six members of the MLN: Jorge Grops and Norma Carmen Paglianno, in Cerrito de la Victoria, while in a house located in Pérez Gomar they murdered Jorge Candan Grajales, Gabriel Schroeder Orozco, Armando H Blanco and Horacio Rovira Griecco, as La Diaria recalled.
