The former president of the Republic, Julio María Sanguinetti, said in a recent interview that, for him, “it would have been stupid” to propose that the military perpetrators of the coup should have been prosecuted for the crimes against humanity they committed.
In uruguaythe military and police who killed, raped, tortured and disappeared people during the dictatorship, were unpunished for decadesunlike what he did Argentina, that imprisoned the high-ranking martial officers of his dictatorship and ended with important sentences for Human Rights violations.
“Only people who don’t have the slightest idea of human life, let’s say, can imagine that we could sit in front of the three commanders who were looking for a way out and say: ‘Well, look, gentlemen, the first thing we are going to do is amnesty all the Tupamaros,’” Sanguinetti explained in a podcast on The Observer.
According to the right-wing ex-president, the simple fact of raising that or proposing to prosecute the military would have ended the meeting. “It would have been just stupid to bring that up. I find it very funny when they say: ‘But you didn’t bring it up?’ How were you going to approach it?” he mused.
On the contrary, what was agreed was an amnesty for political prisoners, including some Tupamaros, and the Expiration Law was established, which offered immunity to the military who, since the dictatorship, committed crimes against humanity.
“The ethical thing would have been to try everyone, all crimes of all kinds —those that had been left pending by the guerrillas or what we could find then from the Army—”, Sanguinetti added, putting the soldiers of the dictatorship in the same category, who they carried out acts of State terrorism, and the civil group MLN-T.
“When we put ourselves in an ethic of responsibility from the political point of view —in which the first value to preserve is peace today and the human rights of the three million Uruguayans today and not put them at risk— we can already do things look from another perspective and that’s where yes there was an amnesty for the guerrillas and then an amnesty for the military”, Sanguinetti concluded.
50 years of the coup
50th anniversary of the coup in Uruguaywhen the then president of Colorado, Juan Maria Bordaberryhe laid the bridge for the military to get on board the government and take over the three powers of the State: this is how the coup of June 1973 began, which began the darkest and bloodiest era in modern Uruguayan history.
years before, in september 1970President Jorge Pacheco Areco launched, together with the military, a strong persecution against the National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros (MLN-T)a battle that he entrusted to Bordaberry when he succeeded him in the Executive since 1972.
It was June 27, 1973 when Juan María Bordaberry officially dissolved both houses of Parliament, marking the start of the coup. He did so arguing that “the criminal action of the conspiracy against the Homeland, combined with the complacency of political groups without a national sense, is inserted in the institutions themselves, in order to present itself covertly as a formally legal activity.”
With the support of the Armed Forces, he announced the creation of a Council of State with legislative, constituent and administrative control functions.. From there, citizens lost the right to freedom of thought, expression and assembly, and the military and police were empowered to take charge of, among other things, public services.
