Uruguay examines accusations of past

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Juan Maria Bordaberry’s presidency of Uruguay in the mid-1970s was marked by a wave of disappearances, torture and killings aimed at wiping out the remnants of the leftist Tupamaro guerrilla movement.

But in March, a left-wing coalition government including former Tupamaros took power for the first time. Now charges of "aggravated homicide" have been filed against the former president and his foreign minister in the most notorious crime of his era: the kidnapping and killing of two congressional leaders exiled in neighboring Argentina after the Uruguayan legislature was shuttered and political parties banned.

Fulfilling a campaign pledge and responding to pressure from within the Broad Front he leads, President Tabare Vazquez, a 65-year-old physician, is also moving to reopen other human rights cases. Excavations have begun at the barracks of an army battalion where victims of abuses during military rule are suspected to have been buried, and all three military services have been given until August to file reports responding to other accusations.

In addition, the government is looking into the 1976 disappearance of the daughter-in-law of a prominent Argentine poet, as well as the fate of a woman the military seized from the Venezuelan Embassy after she sought political asylum there.

http://www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2005/07/31&ID=Ar01403&Section=National

I'm so happy to see Uruguay confronting this, and the leftward drift in general. I hope the damage awful RW dictatorships of the last couple of decades can begin to heal. My friend's dad is from there and they are considering moving back. It's a beautiful country. I've always wanted to go to Punta del Este.