Upset in Utopia

The well-fed voters of little Uruguay (pop. 2.7 million) last week threw out the prolabor, welfare-statist Colorado Party that has ruled the country without interruption for 93 long years. Into power, by a vote of 414,000 to 325,000, went the rightist Nationals.

As news of the upset spread in Montevideo, a delirious mob, waving handkerchiefs and banners of white, the National Party's color, rallied round a ramshackle old mansion, pushed through moldering ground-floor rooms littered with photographs of Uruguayan heroes and of Mussolini, surrounded a brass bed where an emaciated old man lay, his revolver and Gaucho knife handy on the night table. "Patriarch," cried a leader, "we bring you victory!" Luis Alberto de Herrera, 85, the cantankerous spellbinder chief of the Nationals, bounced out of bed and spun about in a round of backslapping.

Gaucho Socialism. The issue that brought the Nationals to power over the Colorados was the one that had for so long kept the Colorados in power: the welfare state. Conceived by Colorado Leader Jose Batlle y Ordonez, twice Uruguay's President (1903-07; 1911-15), Gaucho socialism at first transformed cattle-and sheep-growing Uruguay into a Latin American Utopia, Uruguayans into devoted followers of the Colorados. They got pensions (usually starting at 50) and the eight-hour day 20 years before the U.S. did. They got a vast network of government industries: insurance, rum, cement, petroleum refining and distribution, electricity. They got paid leave for expectant working mothers, state-paid funerals. They paid no income taxes; intricate exchange rates, in effect export duties on wool and beef, met the bills.

Under Luis Batlle Berres, 61 (Batlle y Ordonez' nephew), Uruguayans in the past eleven years got the real bill for Utopia. The state ballooned into an octopus, employed a fifth of the nation's force, with offices staffed so heavily that bureaucrats had to come early to get seats.

Outpriced in the competitive world market by the duties, Uruguay's exports last year dropped 39%. Gold and foreign-exchange reserves fell $46 million to $148 million, and this year the once rock-solid peso followed, slipped from 4.7 to the dollar to 11.8. Prices rose; pensions bought less and less. Cried the Nationals, as the nation went to the polls: "Vote for us, or things will stay as they are!"

Farm Revolt. But the upset was also a rebuke by farmers and ranchers--who paid welfarism's costs--to the citified beneficiaries in Montevideo (pop. 900,000). The leader of the farm revolt was Benito Nardone, 52, a radio personality with a big rural following. Years ago, Montevideo-born Nardone, stevedore, union organizer, newsman and backlands traveling salesman, sat in Congress as a Colorado. He quit in disgust when told to confine himself to drawing his pay and keeping his mouth shut. Taking to the air in 1942, gossipy Benito Nardone set out to woo the farmers, got their rapt attention by giving weather and crop information, advising farm workers to organize, "so you will not be cheated by city cutthroats and moneylenders." He organized 250 chapters of a Rural Federation, soon claimed 120,000 votes, and when this year's campaign began, he toured the backlands, drew big crowds for the Nationals.

Said he last week: "We will roll up our sleeves and do a damned good job." The peso promptly firmed to 9.2 to the dollar. One of the Nationals elected to Uruguay's nine-man ruling National Council of Government, Nardone will get his chance to serve as its chairman, which is equivalent to being President. But doughty old Luis Alberto de Herrera, after spending all his life trying to win the government for the Nationals, will not preside over the government. As one of the three minority members of the current council ruling Uruguay in place of a President, he could not run for reelection.

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