Luis Batlle Berres

President of Uruguay (1897–1964)

Luis Conrado Batlle y Berres (26 November 1897 – 15 July 1964) was a Uruguayan political figure.

Batlle Berres was a journalist and prominent member of the Uruguayan Colorado Party. He was selected – in hindsight, with far reaching effect – to serve as vice presidential running mate for Luis Tomás Berreta. The great great grandson of Catalan settlers from Sitges, Spain, he was the son of another political figure, Luis Batlle y Ordóñez, brother of ex president José Batlle. His mother, Petrona Berres, was of Irish descent and died when he was still a small child. Then, his father remarried but died soon after, in 1908. As a result, he went to live with his uncle, José Batlle y Ordóñez, the three time President of Uruguay, and his cousins César, Rafael and Lorenzo Batlle Pacheco on the Piedras Blancas estate in the suburbs of Montevideo. He studied law at the urging of his godfather, Dr. José Irureta Goyena, and also Military Aviation. In 1933, he was expelled from Uruguay by the Terra dictatorship, and participated in the revolutionary preparations of 1934 and 1935, entering the country clandestinely. In 1936 Batlle Berres returned legally and bought Radio "Ariel". He also became Editor in Chief of El Día. In 1927, he married Matilde Ibáñez Tálice, with whom he had three children: the also ex president Jorge Batlle, concert pianist Luis Batlle and Matilde Linda Batlle, the latter born in Argentina. Batlle Berres was first elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1925 as a member of Jose Batlle's personal list and was reelected in 1928, with the list this time headed by Jose Batlle himself. In 1931, Batlle Berres was again reelected, this time within the dual lists "14" and "15", but following the Terra coup of 1933 he didn't seek office until 1942. He was also the leader of List 15, a left leaning faction which was the majority faction of the Colorado Party from 1946 to about 1960. It placed second in the 1966 elections, but regained its majority position by 1970. Jorge Batlle, the son of Luis Batlle Berres, led the faction after his father died in 1964. According to one study, Batlle Berres was a strong willed executive "who incurred wide criticism for employing his exalted office to advance his own interests." In 1950, he split the Colorado Party be deciding to offer his own ticket under a separate election list. This led to the emergence of his own List 15 faction, and the List 14 faction, led by the Batlle Pacheco brothers. In 1948, he founded in Montevideo the newspaper Acción, which he made the mouthpiece of his political faction. Batlle Berres faced criticism, launched by some sectors of his party, for proclaiming himself the heir of Batllismo. As noted by one biography, “The opposition was led by César and Lorenzo Batlle Pacheco, sons of José Batlle, who believed that they were the true heirs of Batllismo, although in practice they were much more conservative than their cousin and president.” Commenting on the differences between Batlle Berres and César and Lorenzo Batlle Pacheco, one study argued that

"Luis Batlle directed his appeal to the lower classes and to the labor unions. In the second and third decades of the century, Jose Batlle had done the same, but his sons and El Dia had settled down to the enjoyment of a position based on a sated bureaucracy, an accomplished social revolution, and an urban middle class whose contentment grew from its preferred position. Luis Batlle appeared to some as a demagogue quite as dangerous as Luis Herrera, but to the lower classes he seemed for the moment to promise the improvement in living level which the Batllista ideology had led them to believe they could expect. Many voters in the unthinking middle groups perceived Luis Batlle as a reasonable alternative to Jose Battle's sons, however, and he was careful to cultivate this confusion of thought. He ran in most elections in the Batllista slates of candidates, but intra party developments reflected his increasing power."

He served as Vice President of Uruguay in 1947, succeeding Alberto Guani and held this office upon the death of President Berreta. Batlle Berres was the fourth person to hold the office of Vice President of Uruguay. The office dates from 1934, when Alfredo Navarro became Uruguay's first Vice President. He previously served as the President of the Chamber of Deputies of Uruguay from 1943 to 1945.

Batlle Berres was President of the National Council of Government of Uruguay from 1955 to 1956. Batlle thus both preceded and succeeded Andrés Martínez Trueba as president.

Within the Colorado Party, he is widely acknowledged for being the founder of the political period known as Neo Batllism. Lasting until 1958, this corresponded to (as noted by one to one study) "the work deployed from the state by the Partido Colorado led by Luis Batlle Berres to implement a national project that picked up on the Batllist tradition and was capable of achieving ambitious goals in terms of social and economic progress" (Nahum et al., 2011: 94). A supporter of economic development based on import substitution industrialization and agricultural expansion, Batlle Berres applied interventionist and statist economic measures to promote such development and didn't abide by the IMF's austerity recommendations. Industry and agriculture was supported through credits and subsidies, together with control over the nation's currency. According to one study, this was "a fact that brought him into conflict with ranchers. BROU, which controlled sales of foreign currency, paid less for foreign currency earned from livestock raising to favor industrial requirements for raw materials and machinery. This differential exchange rate policy stimulated the development of light industry, more than 90 percent of which was directed toward the internal market." Profitable prices were nevertheless guaranteed by the state for agriculture and stimulated imports of agricultural machinery, while new crops were developed to supply industry with raw materials and surpluses were exported. However, livestock raising continued to stagnate. Price intervention was also carried out, with a law of September the 19th 1947 granting broad powers to the Executive Power to insure supplies and prevent excessive increases in prices of articles of prime necessities. During his first presidency Uruguay experienced, according to one biography, “a moment of economic prosperity thanks above all to the Korean War, which produced an increase in foreign trade.” Batlle Berres also favoured modernizing industry by safeguarding national investors and he carried out a plan to nationalize companies that remained under British control, such as the water company and the railway. Great Britain gave in to pressure from Batlle Berres to pay off the debt it had contracted with Uruguay during the Second World War for the supply of meat. Luis Batlle's economic measures arguably reflected his own philosophical outlook. He planned that the State should be the source of regulation between capital and labor and in that sense, according to one study," assigned it a protective function, although without considering competing or intervening with private companies." He saw intervention was only legitimate when the private company was unaware of the general interest: "When the private company is unaware of that interest and attempts to take advantage of the freedom granted to it for purposes contrary to it, state interventionism will be imposed as a primary duty," an approach translated into the need for the State to harmonize the relations between capital and labor: "The main function of the government directed economy is, first and foremost, the custody and protection of the economic interests of the Republic " The " general interest" in this case must be translated by social peace, which is achieved by anticipating the exaltation of the contradictions between dominant and dominated classes. The State must act by "promoting laws of justice and seeking the best solutions that intensify work, creating wealth ", which "is not the property of capital, but a good part of it belongs to the worker and it is fair that it be distributed fairly." equity and reaches all classes, providing well being to all those who have produced it." According to one study, it was generally believed that Luis Batlle, "even while President, informally encouraged illegal strikes for improved wages or working conditions. Interviews, 1950 and 1953. As President, he could assure that his own representatives on the tripartite Wage Councils would be sympathetic to the workers' positions. Employers, interviewed in 1960, indicated that there had indeed been greater sympathy for union views during this position by Executive representatives on the Councils than was true after the Blanco victory."

Batlle Berres was also involved in foreign policy during the course of his two presidencies. According to one observer, "One of the great moments of his political career is when he traveled to the United States, as president of the National Government Council, to defend the country's right to industrialization, hindered and confronted by the closed protectionism of the United States. and Europe. His speeches were memorable and at the United Nations he also proposed the incorporation of mainland China, then outside the international system emanating from the post war." Batlle Berres visited the United States in December 1955 where he was, according to an obituary, "warmly welcomed as leader of one of the freest and most democratic nations in the world." At President Eisenhower's invitation Batlle Berres had arrived in Washington along with a staff of financial and economic experts. Relations between America and Uruguay, which had traditionally been cordial, had been clouded by a United States tariff barrier against Uruguayan wool. In putting forward his case Batlle Berres noted to American officials that Uruguay was a big purchaser of American products, and Uruguay would have to look for other markets unless the U. S. removed trade obstacles. Also, at a luncheon given New York Mayor Wagner Batlle Berres criticized the United States for encouraging "strongman" governments in Latin America, saying that such regimes were the "very best breeding grounds" of Communism. He also received honorary degrees from Columbia and Fordham Universities while visiting New York. Batlle Berres also sought to preserve his relations with Argentina and Brazil, the latter country he visited during the presidency of Marshal Eurico Gaspar Dutra, popularly elected in 1946. He also attempted a reapproachment with Juan Domingo Perón, despite the fact that they came from opposite backgrounds and represented very different civic values. According to one observer, however, "Difficult times would come later, because the Argentines who settled in Uruguay, fleeing the persecutions of Peronism, expressed themselves freely and Argentina aspired to silence them. This generated a growing confrontation that would continue and even worsen over the years, to the point that after 1950, with Luis Batlle already in the National Government Council, there was practically a cutoff in the movement of people."