Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas (Spanish pronunciation: [taβaˈɾe raˈmom ˈbaskes ˈrosas]; 17 January 1940 – 6 December 2020) was a Uruguayan politician and oncologist who served as the 39th and 41st President of Uruguay from 2005 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2020. During his political career, Vázquez was a member of the Broad Front coalition. Before his first presidential term, Vázquez was president of the Club Progreso team and made two unsuccessful presidential bids in 1994 and 1999. He served as Intendant of Montevideo between 1990 and 1994 shortly before his first presidential campaign. Vázquez was first elected president on 31 October 2004 and took office on 1 March 2005. He was the first socialist president of the country. His first presidency was remembered for his diplomatic relationships with Brazil and Argentina while being criticized by his party over his anti-abortion views. He strengthened the unions and improved Uruguay's social services. After leaving the presidency in 2010, Vázquez successfully ran for a second term in 2014. After leaving office for a second time in March 2020, he later died of lung cancer in December of that year at the age of 80.
Early life Vázquez was born in the neighbourhood of La Teja, Montevideo on 17 January 1940, the fourth child of Héctor Vázquez, a worker of ANCAP, and Elena Rosas. He had Galician ancestry; his grandparents were originally from Ourense and Santiago de Compostela. He studied medicine at the Universidad de la República Medical School, graduating as an oncologist in 1972. In 1976, he received a grant from the French government, allowing him to obtain additional training at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris.
Early career and Intendant of Montevideo Vázquez, an avid football fan, was president of the Club Progreso team from 1979 to 1989. From 1990 to 1995, Vázquez was the Frente Amplio coalition's first Intendant of Montevideo. In that post, he carried out the functions of both the mayor of the city and governor of the department. In 1994, he made an unsuccessful run for president as the Frente Amplio candidate. He actually finished with the most votes of the candidates in the field, more than 120,000 votes ahead of the next-highest vote-getter, former president Julio Maria Sanguinetti of the Colorado Party. However, under the multi-candidate Ley de Lemas system then in effect, Sanguinetti won the election, since he was the highest-finishing candidate of the party winning the most votes. Still, Vázquez turned in the best showing of a third-party candidate since the restoration of the presidential system in 1967; he only had 12,100 fewer votes than the combined vote of the second-place National Party. In 1996, he was elected leader of the Frente Amplio, replacing the historic leader of the left-wing coalition, Líber Seregni. He ran again unsuccessfully for president in 1999. In the first election held after Uruguay scrapped the Ley de Lemas system, he led the field in the first round, with 40.1 percent of the vote. He lost the runoff to Colorado candidate Jorge Batlle, taking 45.9 percent of the vote.
First presidency of Uruguay (2005–2010)
In the 2004 elections, he won 50.45% of the valid votes, enough to win the presidency in a single round. He became the country's first president from a left-wing party, and thus the first one since the 1830s who was not a member of the National (Blanco) or Colorado parties. He also had the support of the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, likewise a centre-left democratic socialist.
Among the most complex issues that dominated his administration was an ongoing conflict with Argentina over potential contamination from pulp mills being built on the Uruguayan side of the Uruguay River. He even asked Bush for help in the event of an armed conflict with Argentina. Vázquez was the first President of Uruguay to visit New Zealand and South Korea, and he established contacts with other countries in Southeast Asia. While he maintained cordial relations with the United States, hosting U.S. President George W. Bush, Vázquez did not sign Bush's failed Free Trade Area of the Americas. This visit attracted a measure of censure from the opposition, from Pedro Bordaberry and others, who were critical of Vázquez for having chosen to be in Cuba during a commemoration – which Vázquez himself initiated – for the victims of the 1973–1985 dictatorship; Bordaberry's father, Juan María Bordaberry, established the dictatorship with a 1973 decree dissolving Congress. In 2007 the loading of Iranian arms onto a Uruguayan Navy vessel visiting Venezuela, in contravention of a UN-sponsored arms embargo, provoked international comment. The domestic controversy regarding this event was centred on protests against Vázquez's Government by the opposition National Party. In June 2008 President Vázquez visited Cuba. While in Cuba, Vázquez and the Presidential party engaged in a number of high-profile events, including a summit with President Raúl Castro. In June 2009 President Vázquez, who had been courting diplomatically the Bolivian President Evo Morales, announced his support for the delisting of coca leaves from the category of a "dangerous drug". In February 2010 the Vázquez Government was cooperating with an investigation to explain how two Northrop F-5E jet engines valued at many millions of U.S. dollars had surfaced in Uruguay. Tabaré Vázquez and his government have pursued a centre-left economic policy. Between 2005 and 2008, the minimum wage rose from 1,350 pesos to 4,150 pesos ($70 to $200), while poverty fell from 30.9 per cent to 12.7 per cent of the population and unemployment from 11.3 per cent to 7 per cent.
Official visits This is a list of official visits abroad made by Vázquez during his first term in office, from 1 March 2005 to 1 March 2010:
2008
Popularity
According to an Equipos/MORI opinion poll his approval had fallen to 44% by April 2007, a level below the electoral support he received in the 2004 elections. His approval later recovered, however, reaching 80% by his last term in office. In October 2006, President Vázquez was still personally more popular than his government with a 62% approval rating. However, a considerable drop in the government's popularity was registered by an Equipos/MORI poll in late April 2007, showing that 44% of Uruguayans approved of his administration. A new poll by Factum showed a 57% approval by June 2008, however, indicating a significant recovery from a year earlier.
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