JUAN MARíA BORDABERRY

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'Juan María Bordaberry'

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

'Juan María Bordaberry Arocena' is a Uruguayan statesman, who served as President from 1972 to 1976. In 1973, he dissolved the General Assembly and ruled as a military-sponsored dictator until 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, where he sat from 1969 to 1971 as agriculture minister in the government of President Jorge Pacheco Areco.
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. Bordaberry, at the time, was a very minor political figure; he had no qualifications for the job 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.
In 1973, the military commanders threatened to throw him out of power unless he agreed to be the figurehead leader of a coup d'etat. Bordaberry gave in; on June 27, 1973 he dissolved Congress and suspended the Constitution. For the next three years, he ruled by decree with the assistance of a National Security Council.
In 1976, the military, preferring to rule directly, ousted Bordaberry from office. The military claimed that Bordaberry wanted to permanently dissolve the political parties and set up a corporatist state. He then returned to his ranch.
Pedro Bordaberry, a son of Juan Maria Bordaberry, was Tourism Minister in the government of Jorge Batlle.

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Arrest

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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 legislators, Senator Zelmar Michelini of the Christian Democratic Party and House leader Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz of the National Party. 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]. However, former President Julio Sanguinetti has been critical of the one-sided prosecution of individuals involved in the conflict.

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★ Juan María Bordaberry photograph