Julio María Sanguinetti Coirolo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxuljo maˈɾia saŋɡiˈneti kojˈɾolo]; born 6 January 1936) often known by his initials JMS, is a Uruguayan former lawyer, journalist and politician of the Colorado Party (PC) who served as the President of Uruguay as the 35th president from 1985 to 1990, and again as the 37th president from 1995 to 2000. He was the first democratically elected president after twelve years of military dictatorship.
Born in Montevideo, Sanguinetti graduated from the University of the Republic in 1961 with a law degree. He later combined his legal practice with work as a journalist. He had already been writing for the press, first in the weekly Canelones and later, since 1955, as a columnist for Acción, a newspaper established by the then-President, Luis Batlle Berres, for which he covered events such as the Cuban Revolution and the OAS Foreign Ministers' summit that censured Cuba for its decision to establish relations with the Soviet Union.
In the 1962 general election, Sanguinetti was elected National Representative for the Montevideo Department, and re-elected in 1966. In 1969 the then president Jorge Pacheco Areco appointed him Minister of Industry and Commerce. From March to October 1972 he served as Minister of Education and Culture under Juan María Bordaberry. He publicly opposed the 1973 coup d'état and the subsequent civil-military dictatorship.
Sanguinetti participated in the Naval Club Pact that made the democratic transition possible. In the 1984 general election he was elected President of Uruguay as the most voted candidate of the most voted political party, according to the Ley de Lemas system. Major government initiatives he undertook during his first term consisted of measures to disarm the previous regime, and included an amnesty law in favor of people who were still detained, convicted by military justice for political crimes and the Law on the Expiration of the Punitive Claims of the State. In foreign policy, Sanguinetti's government recognized and established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and signed the Alvorada Act, which added Uruguay to the regional integration process, which later led to the creation of the Southern Common Market.
Sanguinetti Coirolo was born in Montevideo on January 6, 1936, to a middle-class Italian-Uruguayan family from the town of Chiavari near the city of Genoa. His parents were Julio León Sanguinetti Maupe and Ema Coirolo Saravia. His maternal grandmother was Regina Saravia de Coirolo, daughter of Chiquito Saravia, brother of Aparicio Saravia, caudillo of the National Party.
Raised in a politically diverse family, he joined the Colorado Party in his teens. He attended Elbio Fernández School for his primary education, and the Liceo José Enrique Rodó and Alfredo Vásquez Acevedo Institute for his secondary education. In 1955 he enrolled at the University of the Republic, from which he obtained a law degree in 1961.
In 1963, at the age of 27, Sanguinetti became a member of the Chamber of Representative for the Montevideo Department. In 1964 he was a member of the Uruguayan delegation that participated in the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.
In 1966, Sanguinetti served as a member of the drafting group and informer on Constitutional Reform and from 1967 he was a member of the advisory group of Colorado President Jorge Pacheco on affairs related to the Organization of American States. Later on, in 1969, Pacheco appointed him as Minister for Industry and Commerce, a position which he occupied until 1971, when he was appointed Head of the Uruguayan Trade Mission to the USSR. He also became Deputy Editor of Acción.
In March 1972, the new President, also from the PC Party, Juan María Bordaberry, brought him to the government once again as Minister for Education and Culture. That same year, Sanguinetti was a founding member of the National Commission for the Historical, Artistic and Cultural Heritage of the Nation.
Civilian-military administration 1973–1985
The breach of the constitutional order by the Armed Forces in June 1973 deprived him of his positions in the Government and in the Chamber of Representatives, where he had renewed his seat once again in 1971, as well as his position as Deputy Editor of Acción Newspaper - which was closed down - and President of the National Council of Visual Arts, to which he had been appointed in 1967. In 1976 he was prohibited from undertaking any political activity.
During the following years, Sanguinetti worked as a journalist, working from a viewpoint that was critical of the de facto Government, in El Día Newspaper (1973–1981), Visión Newspaper (since 1974, as an opinion columnist, a collaboration which he has continued up until today), and in the weekly publication Correo de los Viernes (established by him in 1981 and edited until 1984), as well as in the promotion of cultural and sports activities as the President of the Regional UNESCO Centre for the promotion of books in South America (1975–1984) and Vice-President of the popular Peñarol Football Club.
Following the rejection of the constitutional project on 30 November 1980 and having had his political rights restored on 29 June 1981, Sanguinetti headed the PC delegation in the political party negotiations with the army in order to allow a peaceful and ordered transition to democracy. The negotiations ended with the signing of the Naval Club Pact on 3 August 1984. In 1983 he was elected Secretary General of the Executive Committee of PC and in August 1984 he obtained the majority nomination for the presidential elections which were to be held later that year, putting an end to 12 years of dictatorship. Sanguinetti also received significant support for his candidacy from the ruling military.
On 25 November 1984, general elections were held. Sanguinetti won 31.2% of the votes, defeating the best PN candidate, Alberto Zumarán; thus on 1 March 1985 he was sworn in as president with a 5-year term substituting the temporary president, Rafael Addiego, who had in turn substituted the military president, Gregorio Álvarez, on the previous 12 February. The ceremony was attended by 72 foreign representatives as an expression of support from the international community towards that new era in Uruguayan politics. (At the time, Sanguinetti had been unwilling to participate in an office-conferring ceremony together with Álvarez, and thus the interim arrangement with Addiego was worked out with the agreement of the parties concerned, but in later years Álvarez found a not so unlikely defender in Sanguinetti, who argued that Álvarez's legal troubles since the coming of the Broad Front government in 2005 were unnecessarily one-sided, since known former Tupamaro insurgents were being ignored by Uruguayan justice.)
Considered at the time a progressive politician in political questions and more conservative in economic questions, Sanguinetti managed to rehabilitate the image of a party that included a great variety of ideological diversity, the more conservative sectors of which had supported the coup d'état in 1973. He immediately lifted the ban on political parties and leaders that had actively opposed the dictatorship and signed an amnesty for political prisoners.
With respect to foreign relations, Sanguinetti re-launched relations with Spain and re-established contacts with communist countries. In the nearer geographic arena, on 26 May 1987, and as a colophon to several preparatory meetings, he signed the Montevideo Agreement with his colleague, Raúl Alfonsín. This agreement was decisive in giving an impulse to regional economic integration according to the objectives outlined in the South American Integration Association (ALADI).
Alfonsín had already been negotiating an ambitious agreement to dismantle tariffs in bilateral trade with the Brazilian José Sarney; now, Sanguinetti was included in an open field project that adopted a three-country shape and that gained impulse from the summit of the three presidents which the Uruguayan had organized in Colonia on 6 February 1988. With the inclusion of Paraguay, all this work led to the creation of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) in 1991.