José Batlle y Ordóñez
José Pablo Torcuato Batlle y Ordóñez, nicknamed Don Pepe, was a prominent Uruguayan politician who served two terms as President of Uruguay for the Colorado Party. The son of a former president, he introduced his political system, Batllism, to South America and modernized Uruguay through his creation of extensive welfare state reforms.
In 1898, Batile served as interim president for a few weeks. He was later elected to the presidency for two terms: from 1903 to 1907 and from 1911 to 1915. He remains one of the most popular Uruguayan presidents, mainly due to his role as a social reformer. Influenced by Krausist liberalism, he is known for influencing the introduction of universal suffrage and the eight-hour workday, as well as free high school education. He was one of the main promoters of Uruguayan secularization, which led to the separation of the state and the Catholic Church. Education started a process of great expansion from the mid-to-late 19th century onward. It became the key to success for the middle class community. The state established free high school education and created more high schools through the country. The University of the Republic was also opened to women, and educational enrollment increased throughout the country. Batlle also "revitalized the Colorado party and strengthened its liberal tradition, giving way to ideas of general and universal interest, and favoring the right of the working class to organize and put forward just demands."
Government intervention in the economy increased during Batlle's tenure. Batlle nationalized Montevideo's electric power plant, and BROU. He established industrial institutes for geology and drilling, industrial chemistry, and fisheries. In 1914, the administration purchased the North Tramway and Railway Company, which later became the State Railways Administration of Uruguay. He implemented protectionist policies for industry. Indigenous companies also emerged, although foreign capital, as noted by one study, "also took advantage of the legislation and came to control the meat industry. The growth of the frigorífico meat-processing industry also stimulated the interbreeding of livestock, Uruguay's main source of wealth." Batlle believed in government intervention in the economy, and criticized economic inequality.
Early life and background
Batlle was born in Montevideo on 23 May 1856 to Lorenzo Batlle y Grau and Amalia Ordoñez. Batlle's grandfather, José Batlle y Carreó, had arrived in Montevideo on his own ship with Batlle's grandmother from Sitges, a town near Barcelona, and built a flour mill which won a contract to provision the Royal Spanish Navy in Montevideo. Batlle's grandfather was loyal to the Spanish crown through both the British invasions of the River Plate and the first and second attempts to secure Uruguayan independence from Spain led by José Gervasio Artigas, and subsequently returned to Spain in 1814, and the rest of the Batlle family followed in 1818. Batlle's grandmother died in Sitges in 1823, and his grandfather subsequently returned to Montevideo in 1833 to reopen the flour mill. Batlle's father Lorenzo had been born in Uruguay in 1810, and returned the Montevideo three years before the rest of the family in 1830, after an extensive education in France and Spain. Batlle's father quickly joined and became prominent within the Colorados, and was involved in the Uruguayan Civil War, notably personally escorting Fructuoso Rivera to exile in Brazil in 1847. Lorenzo Batlle married Batlle's mother, the daughter of another Colorado guerrilla, during the Uruguayan Civil War.The Batlle family were prohombres within the Colorado Party, with five of Batlle's relatives serving as president. Batlle's father Lorenzo had served as Minister of War during the Great Siege of Montevideo, and was elected President of Uruguay in 1868 when Batlle was 12 years old. Batlle's children César, Rafael and Lorenzo were actively engaged in politics, with César and Lorenzo serving in. He was also the uncle of another Uruguayan president, Luis Batlle Berres, and the great-uncle of President Jorge Batlle, and his uncle-in-law Duncan Stewart served as acting president for three weeks in 1894.
After attending an English school in Montevideo, Batlle began studying at the University of the Republic. At university, he became involved in the discussions and debates between the 'idealists' and 'positivists'. Led by Prudencio Váquez y Vega, Batlle was a prominent member of the idealists. Batlle's political ideology was influenced by the work of philosopher Heinrich Ahrens, whose work was introduced to Batlle by Váquez y Vega. Ahrens 'Course of Natural Law,' as one study noted, "exalted the human personality and made proposals for the reform of society based on the innate dignity of man." Batlle acknowledged a great debt later in life to Váquez y Vega, writing in 1913 on the title page of a gift copy of Ahrens "in this great work I formed my criterion of the law and it has served me as a guide in my public life." Batlle left university in 1879 without completing his law degree, and the following year a 24-year-old Batlle convinced his father to let him study for a year in Paris, where he took a course in English and sat in on philosophy lectures at the Sorbonne and Collège de France before returning home when money ran out.
Batlle also became a prominent journalist. In 1878 Batlle and a friend founded a raionalistic journal, 'El Espíritu Nuevo,' whose mission was "the total emancipation of the American spirit from the tutelage of the Old World." Batlle contributed scientific articles and poetry to the review, and later that year started contributing articles to a Montevideo newspaper. His first article, published 3 days before he turned 23, was an attack on the dictatorship of Colonel Lorenzo Latorre. In 1881 Batlle assumed the editorship of La Razon to oppose the government of General Santos. Batlle was exposed to all kinds of threats until one night his house was assaulted and an attempt made against the life of his father at whom shots were fired but which fortunately missed their mark.
In 1885, Batlle returned to the journalistic field in company with the famous journalist Dr. Teofilo D. Gil. He and Gil devoted themselves to preparing the public sentiment for a revolutionary outbreak. As noted by one study, however, "Hardly had the opportunity arrived when Batlle, who had started with Rufino T. Dominguez the organization of the first battalion of volunteers, abandoned the pen of the journalist, emigrated to Buenos Aires, and devoted himself exclusively to the work of a soldier, until the unfortunate issue of the struggle at Quebracho."
In 1886, Batlle founded the newspaper El Día, which he used as a political platform for criticizing his opponents and promoting his reformist agenda. That same year Batlle undertook a campaign in El Día on behalf of the children in an orphan asylum and of pauper maniacs in an insane asylum. This campaign, one study noted, "had the excellent result of depriving the City Council of Montevideo of the control of public charity and entrusting it to a commission of distinguished citizens." When a new revolutionary movement started at Buenos Aires, Batlle removed there to act as secretary to Colonel Galeano. However, the movement died in its inception, and returning to Montevideo Batlle again assumed the editorship of El Día. By March 1887 however, as noted by one study, "Batlle was ready to launch upon a new aspect of his life's work, that of reorganizing and revivifying the Colorado Party." Batlle's time in the journalistic battle had convinced him that the Colorado Party still had a "powerful vitality" but had been seriously discredited and comprised by several dictatorships carrying the Colorado label. As noted by one study, "Batlle was convinced that the Colorado Party "must recover its prestige" so that the country could enter an era that he characterized as "institutional truth, fruitful freedom, order and solid and enlightened progress." Faced with the lack of structure of the Colorado Party in 1903, the elected President of the Republic became its natural guide, since his influence was decisive for the appointments of candidates and Political Leaders; and Batlle used that power to promote numerous changes in the party organization."
Political career
Batlle's political career began in 1887, when he was appointed as the jefe político of department of Minas. His appointment was short-lived, for he resigned after six months to seek election to the Chamber of Deputies as a candidate on the Colorado ticket. After a disagreement with then-president Máximo Tajes, however, Batlle lost his spot on the ticket. Following his departure to Minas, El Día stopped publishing, but Batlle reopened the paper in 1889 to support the campaign of Julio Herrera y Obes for the presidency, whose financial support helped Batlle reopen the paper. The new El Día sold at 2 cents a copy on the streets. As noted by one study, it was "the first street sale of newspapers in Uruguay, the first newspaper whose aim was mass readership." The presidency of Herrera y Obes disappointed Batlle however, with one study noting that"Batlle had been working to reorganize the Colorado Party so that it could win real elections and name presidents. Herrera y Obes saw the party's role differently it should be the instrument of the president, not his superior; the power of the government, not the broad base of the party, would win the elections. When Herrera y Obes proceeded to name the Colorado candidates for the legislature, Batlle broke with the President. And when Idiarte Borda continued Herrera y Obes' political tactics and combined them with overt corruption, Batlle erupted in Colorado party meetings and in the press. The young grocery clerk who assassinated Borda in '97, during Saravia's revolution, had been inspired, he said, by the bitter articles against the President in opposition newspapers, but evil tongues insisted that Batlle's connection with the assassination was more direct than merely writing blistering press editorials."
Batlle turned his support to Juan Lindolfo Cuestas, whom Batlle saw as an opportunity to have free elections and remake the Colorado Party along the lines Batlle had long preached. Batlle would become President of the National executive Committee of the Colorado Party, or at least the pro-Cuestas faction of the party. He was eventually elected in 1891 as a deputy for the department of Salto, and quickly rose to further prominence within the Colorado party. Batlle started organizing Colorado party clubs based on "grass-roots" democratic assemblies, and towards the end of 1895 circumstances led to Batlle adopting a pro-labor attitude that he would hold for the rest of his life. Montevideo workers who sought to improve their wages and reduce their working hours organized and went on strike. The government, made up of Batlle's own Colorado party, denounced the strikers as "rebellious workers" and brought all of its force to bear to break the strike The strikers were strongly supported by Batlle and El Día, where Batlle wrote "if this working day ought to be considered suicide for the workers, it is, on the part of the employer, an assassination." El Día started a permanent department called "The Working Man's Movement" as a forum for the employed classes. Batlle continued his ruminations through his years as a Colorado politician. On one occasion, while confiding some of his ruminations with Julio Herrera y Obes the latter replied, astounded "Why, man, you're a socialist!" Similarly, Cuestas, who didn't trust Batlle entirely, described him as such "This citizen is a young man of 45, well educated, the son of the late President Batlle, a newspaperman by profession, a revolutionary political agitator, a very tall man with the muscles of a Roman gladiator. He is popular with the politically active elements of the younger generation. He is not accepted by conservative opinion."
Despite this, Cuestas did not veto Batlle's candidacy for the presidency as his government still needed the Colorado political support Batlle contributed. However, Cuestas had no intention of allowing Batlle to succeed him, instead wanting a successor who would continue his cardinal principles, strict economy and conciliation of the Nationalists. Cuestas had in mind his Minister of Government, Eduardo MacEachen, who was a substantial landowner and prominent member of the conservative classes. In the end, Batlle would go on to succeed Cuestas as president to put in place policies that tackled the numerous social issues facing Uruguay.