Newsletter December 2024
The little country that could: Uruguay brings back progressive government
Here is some excellent news to end the year! And we all need good feminist news.
With the second round of its Presidential elections on November 24, Uruguay once again chose the path of progressive government after five years of right-wing rule. Yamandú Orsi of the left-wing Frente Amplio (Broad Front) garnered 49.8% of the vote, while his opponent Álvaro Delgado of the ruling right-wing National Party, garnered 46%. Uruguayans are required to vote or pay a fine, and 89% of them turned out.
Uruguayans had been on the edge of their seats: in the first round of voting on October 27, Orsi had garnered 44% of the vote, while Delgado had received 26.8% and the young populist Andres Ojeda of the conservative Colorado Party received 17%, forcing a second round with the top two candidates. Would Ojeda’s voters rally to leftist Orsi and his vice-presidential pick Carolina Cosse, or the more ideologically aligned Delgado? In the end, Orsi and Cosse obtained a 4-point advantage over Delgado, suggesting some of Ojeda’s voters had indeed crossed over to the left.
I asked the fabulous Lilián Abracinskas, a stalwart feminist activist who founded the influential organization Mujer y Salud en Uruguay (Women and Health in Uruguay) in 1996 and whom I interviewed in July 2022, how she felt about this result: “We feel relief and a lot of hope! Uruguay is once again moving in a progressive direction, and the measures the Orsi government plans to carry out will again position Uruguay at the forefront of human rights in the region, as it was earlier in this century.”
Why does Uruguay matter, you might ask? It is, after all, a small South American country wedged between Brazil and Argentina, with a population of only 3.4 million. But it has been a pioneer in Latin America, marrying policies advancing economic justice such as free, universal health care and free public education all the way through university, with socially progressive measures such as same-sex marriage, legalized cannabis and access to safe and legal abortion, free-of-charge, in the first trimester of pregnancy. When Uruguay’s abortion law was liberalized in 2012, the country joined a very small club in the region: at that time, only Cuba and Guyana provided a modicum of access to safe and legal abortion. Since then, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico have also recognized abortion rights and changed their laws to improve access, and the social movement known as the “marea verde” (the Green Tide, with its green scarves) has swept Latin America to demand change.
For 15 years, from 2005 to 2020, the Frente Amplio held Uruguay’s Presidency with José Mujica and Tabaré Vázquez, the latter of whom won two non-consecutive, five-year terms. Then in 2019, Luis Lacalle Pou of the National party won narrowly, taking over the Presidency with a coalition of right-wing and right-leaning parties. Under Uruguay law, however, a president cannot run for consecutive terms. Lacalle Pou was therefore not a candidate in the 2024 race.
How had the country fared during those five years of right-wing government, I wondered, and how had progressive forces held the line and fought back? I spent a few days in Montevideo, the capital, at the end of October 2024, to reconnect with MYSU and Lilián. Since its inception, MYSU has worked tirelessly to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights in Uruguay and hold the government accountable for its policies. It was one of the leading organizations behind the liberalization of the country’s abortion law.
I arrived on October 27, an auspicious day. Lilián had put her name forward in the elections for the Senate as an alternative candidate for Óscar Andrade of the Communist Party. (Members of Parliament are elected on the basis of lists using proportional representation). She had just found out that Andrade had been elected on the Frente Amplio slate, which will now control 16 of 30 Senate seats. She will therefore join Andrade’s Cabinet, and for the first time, work inside the institutions of government rather than pressure them from the outside. It’s a big and exciting change! Meanwhile, MYSU will continue forward in the hands of a new generation of activists.
Here are some highlights of our October conversation:
FG: Congratulations Lilián! This election to the Senate on the Frente Amplio slate is huge news for you personally. How does it feel?
LA: Thank you. I must say I was at first disappointed about the overall results of the first round. How can a government [the right-wing National Party] that didn’t work for the people, that engaged in corruption and illegal acts, with open connections to narco-traffickers, that had scandals erupting practically every week, still receive so many votes? What evidence do people need? Over the last five years, the right-wing government used the state to serve rich people, with so-called trickle-down economics that never did trickle down. Instead, the government attacked the social policies of the state and our welfare programs. As a result, we are more unequal and poorer than five years ago, while the rich got richer.
FG: Why do you think Uruguayans voted for the right in 2019? To be fair, the 2019 Presidential election was very close [Lacalle Pou got 50.8% of the vote], so it wasn’t a landslide. Were people just tired of the Frente Amplio and the left, just wanting change, a kind of pendulum swing?
LA: Well, Lacalle Pou is similar to [Brazil’s] Bolsonaro and [Argentina’s] Milei in terms of corruption, but he is more discreet. His own father was President of Uruguay between 1990-1995, so he understands our politics. And the media has been very favorable to Lacalle Pou and the right-wing. Three families control all the TV stations here. They didn’t report the “bad news” under Lacalle Pou’s government, the way they did under the Frente Amplio governments. This was supposed to be a fiscally responsible, law and order government. But after five years, the deficit is not lower. The debt has increased. Poverty is higher, and crime and insecurity are higher.
FG: Despite the lack of accurate media reporting, people were still able to see through the right-wing rhetoric in 2024, is that what you are saying?
LA: Yes. It got so bad at some point, they couldn’t hide it. Several Ministers had to resign after the government issued a new Uruguayan passport to a drug trafficker who was in jail in Dubai. He then used that new passport to escape, and later even gave a live interview on TV from an undisclosed location! Why was this going on, what were the government’s connections to these traffickers? The left ran a good campaign, we canvassed house by house, and social movements really came out. The right-wing had all these corruption scandals, and they campaigned online a lot, with bots and videos. They have so much money, and the national media on their side. The difference between the two campaigns was stark. Citizen participation is high in Uruguay, and progressive forces are very active. Feminism is a strong force here, our March 8 [International Women's day] demonstrations are massive here. So that adds up.
FG: Wow, that story of the passport issued to the jailed trafficker is shocking. How do you assess the state of parliament [comprised of the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives] after the election?
LA: The Senate is under the control of the Frente Amplio with 16 seats out of 30. That’s good. In the Chamber of Representatives, the Frente Amplio has 48 seats, while the coalition headed by the right-wing National and Colorado parties has 49, and libertarians/anti-vaxxers have 2. That’s disappointing but not catastrophic. It will require a lot of negotiations. The very good news is that the Cabildo Abierto led by Guido Manini, the [far-right, populist] party that had made fighting “gender ideology” [i.e. feminism, sexual and reproductive rights] their priority, is completely out of the Senate and only has two deputies in the Chamber (they had 11 previously).
FG: When I last interviewed you, you had mentioned the alliance between the military, business and the Catholic Church as the driving force behind the election of Lacalle Pou. Does that alliance still hold?
LA: It does. Since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, the left has risen and has managed to reduce inequities and provide a good standard of living for people here. People take that for granted in some respects: 98% of people here are covered by the public health system. Our COVID pandemic response was exemplary. We have excellent education, excellent free universities. This is part of citizenship in Uruguay, and is considered normal. People don’t realize what they have, they take it for granted.
But it’s interesting that one of the parties now on the right of the political spectrum, the Colorado party, was historically the originator of that welfare system and of the idea of Uruguay as a secular state. President Ordoñez [in the early 20th century] already had the vision of Uruguay with a strong education system, labor protections, public health, social security and industrial policy. These ideas were foundational in a sense. But over time the right-wing parties [Colorado and National] drifted rightward more and more. The first dictator in Uruguay [Juan Bordaberry] in the 1970s was from the Colorado party.
The military-Catholic-business alliance took control of the Colorado and National parties over time. These parties have become less and less “liberal” in the economic sense and much more conservative. But that hasn’t made them very popular. After 70 years in existence, the Colorado party only garnered 15% of the votes this year. The National Party [Lacalle Pou’s party] got 26%.
In 2019, the Cabildo Abierto worried us a great deal, because they took a portion of the Mujica vote [Former President José Mujica is a member of the Movement for Popular Participation or MPP, part of the Frente Amplio. He was formerly a member of the Tupamaros guerilla force and spent 13 years in prison under the military dictatorship]. This portion of the electorate are populists, and they look for the “leader,” the “big man” to follow. Those voters came back to the Frente this time, because Mujica told them Orsi was his chosen successor.
Credit: Natacha Pisarenko/AP
FG: The role of the charismatic male leader cannot be denied, on the right or on the left…
LA: Yes, definitely. There is still plenty of sexism in politics here. Women make up less than 25% of Parliamentarians after this latest election. The Frente Amplio had a 50/50 list, and half our Senators will be women. But the other parties together will only have 2 women out of 14 Senators.
But I want to mention that youth in Uruguay vote left and older people tend to vote right. Even young men vote left here, unlike in Argentina where young men went for [right-wing populist] Milei.
The left in Uruguay is still quite complicated. The Frente Amplio is a political party with many sectors inside. It was founded in 1971, and includes everyone from Social Democrats to anarchists. There are constant negotiations and fights within the Frente. For example, it’s not always been reliably in favor of reproductive rights. Tabaré vetoed the first abortion bill in 2008 that would have decriminalized it completely, and he invoked his ‘pro-life’ mother. This is typical of the left in the region, and is and was true of Lula in Brazil, Christina Kirschner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and that terrible couple Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua. They are not strong on sexual and reproductive health, they consider it a secondary issue.
In Uruguay, the left also became more timid on economic issues over the last decade. Uruguay a small country that needs investments, and we are squeezed between Brazil and Argentina. With agro-business so dominant here, the Frente Amplio began toning down its demands. So voters became less clear about what the Frente stood for, and some went for the right.
FG: Is that why the referendum to lower the age of retirement with a pension failed to get 50% on October 27?
LA: We had collected over 400,000 signatures for this referendum, so we were hopeful it would pass. It wasn’t to force anyone to retire at 60, but to allow it for those who want or need to. The trade unions were behind it, and they are a powerful force here. A third of all workers are unionized in Uruguay.
In the end, only 45% of voters said yes, so it didn’t pass. That’s really disappointing. We now realize that many people didn’t understand the question and didn’t know whether to vote yes. The media didn’t report on the referendum, didn’t explain the stakes, and civil society organizations were under attack for promoting it. Journalists were frankly hostile to us!
FG: I walked around Montevideo these past two days and I saw many more ads for Ojeda, the Colorado party candidate, than for anyone else. It’s really striking. Who’s paying for that?
LA: Ojeda is a product of a marketing campaign, we don’t know by whom. He always had a low rating, was going to come in in third place at most. Why so much money behind Ojeda? He had image consultants behind him, and lots and lots of money all of a sudden, all these TV ads, in the style of the Milei campaign in Argentina. In fact his advisers were Milei’s advisers. We felt he was being “constructed” as a candidate, the young sexy lawyer, close to the police unions, the TV personality who lifts weights and is married to a model. But Uruguay is a small place and it’s harder to pull this off because people know each other.
FG: How do you envision your new role in politics as a feminist?
LA: I’ve been involved in advocacy and activism for maternal health, reproductive and sexual rights and especially abortion rights, since my early twenties. I understood that sexuality and reproduction were always going to be used to oppress and control people, and that true liberation had to include justice on those fronts. I voted Frente Amplio, but always considered social movements as my true home to push for social change. I found political parties very hierarchical, and not that receptive to feminist ideas at first, but I realized over time that influencing public policy was key to change on a significant level. It wasn’t enough as a non-profit to provide health services to women, or to offer solidarity to each other. So the idea of engaging with politics grew on me over the years, first as a lobbyist, and now within the political system.
Now I’m ready to enter the seat of power and affect decisions more directly. I feel I have the experience, and experience matters in politics. It’s a space where I can make a difference at this time. The Communist Party invited me to join their list, even though I’m not a Communist Party member. But I’ve been deeply engaged with the trade union movement since the mid-2000s when we began mobilizing them on abortion. So they know me and respect me as a feminist.
I won’t be on the frontlines, that’s not for me right now, I am an alternate and a member of Andrade’s Cabinet. He is one of the best leaders of the left, part of the workers’ movement, young, smart and open. He recognizes that gender issues are key, but wants someone to advise him. It’s a good arrangement. The other person who is an alternate to Andrade is a fantastic LGBT advocate. I also happen to know all the women in the 16 Frente Amplio Senate offices (Senators and alternates), so this should be exciting.
FG: What are your priorities as you go in? I assume there was damage caused over the last five years that needs to be reversed, but what about moving forward?
LA: Oh yes! In Lacalle Pou’s Cabinet, the Cabildo Abierto controlled the Ministry of Health. While they didn’t try to change the abortion law, they changed the way services operate. They intensified their “adoption counselling” during the mandatory consultations pregnant persons have to go through before they can have an abortion. They also weakened services by naming ob-gyns who refuse to provide abortion care on personal or religious grounds [so-called “conscientious objectors”] as the supervisors of abortion services, if you can imagine that! They cut the budget for the purchase of abortion pills—and of all drugs in the health system for that matter—and increased the wait times for care. They weakened the collection of health data, so if a problem arises, there is no follow-up.
As a result, there has been a change in culture within medical circles. When the ward director is against abortion, it sends a message and enables those who object to make access more difficult, to delay care. They are increasingly and openly critical of women who abort, especially if they have more than one abortion.
Delayed care can be very dangerous. An example: we had one woman die because of lack of obstetric care after a legal abortion in 2020. [There are about 10,000 legal abortions in Uruguay every year]. She went through the consultations required by the law, took the pills as prescribed by the doctor. But when she experienced abdominal pains and came to the ER [probably because the abortion wasn't complete], the doctor who was on call was a conscientious objector, and he only attended to her 24 hours later. She died of septicemia as a result. A complaint was filed but his medical license was only suspended for a year.
And remember that, after 14 weeks of gestation, abortion is still a crime in Uruguay. Since 2013, a few women have been criminalized for illegal abortion. They were sex workers or poor women. A few men who tried to help women who were past 14 weeks have also been charged with a crime.
FG: You told me last time that a law had been passed under the Lacalle Pou government to require the burial of fetuses…
LA: Yes, this law requires all fetuses of more than 500g (about one pound in US measures) to be incinerated and buried, and a certificate issued. There is actually no penalty if it isn’t done, and if the abortion happens in a hospital, the hospital will handle the disposal anyway. So why did they pass this law? It is all about establishing the “personhood” of fetuses, something they are very concerned about.
But there are other laws that are worrisome. The law on mandatory shared custody of children was adopted in 2023. A men’s rights campaign pushed for it because women often get sole custody. Now, even when the father is violent, shared custody is the presumption. We don’t know yet how it’s working in practice, but of course we are very concerned.
FG: You said the Frente Amplio hasn’t historically been as committed to sexual and reproductive health and rights as feminists wanted. Has this changed now with the Orsi platform?
LA: Yes. The Frente Amplio under Orsi explictly includes gender equality as a cross-cutting theme in public policy. This is a big step forward. Sexual and reproductive health, and abortion services, will be a priority in the improvement of our Integrated Health System [the national public health system]. Senator-elect Andrade, who I’m working with, pushed for this within the left. He has been openly critical of the Frente Amplio’s tepid posture on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Young communists are now very well equipped to work on these issues, they have been trained and they are in fact much better than they were in previous parliaments. So we can work with them.
FG: Thank you Lilián, and all the best for this exciting new chapter for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Uruguay. It’s a message to feminists everywhere: stay engaged and never give up!
LA: Thank you. We have a lot to do, but we feel hopeful. And international and regional solidarity means a lot to us.
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In feminist solidarity and defiance, with best wishes and lots of love to all of you dear readers for 2025,
FG