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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2018
The Café Zoracabana sits off the Plaza Libertad in the center of downtown Montevideo. With nineteenth-century decor and white-smocked waiters, it is one of the city's last remaining traditional cafés. Here old friends meet and talk for hours while nursing a cup of tea or cafe con leche. I have come here this evening to meet a former correspondent named Paco, to whom I have been referred by an exiled Uruguayan congressman.
From time to time my companion interrupts our conversation to greet friends who pass by our table. Late in the evening he rises to hug yet another person in a traditional Latin American abrazo. His friend squeezes his hand, speaks for a moment, and moves on. After a discreet pause Paco unfolds a small piece of paper that had been placed surreptitiously in his hand.
page 16 note * Throughout this article fictitious first names will be used when it is necessary to conceal an individual's identity. Where full names are offered, they are the person's actual name.
page 17 note * According to the organization's calculations, at leasl hlteen more Uruguayan political prisoners died in the year follow mg Balbi's death.
page 18 note * The '"Front'" was a broadly based political coalition encompassing Socialists. Communists. Christian Democrats, and others. Formed before the 1971 national elections, it collected an impressive 18 percent of the vote.
page 21 note * Although the laws were directed against (he Communist-led labor movement, blue-collar workers were less adamantly opposed to these measures than were middle-class respondents. Interestingly, the group most supportive ot the government's hard-line, "law-and-order" policies was the urban poor—the unskilled, nonunioni/ed slum dwellers living beneath the organized working class. This group may well still rank with the urban upper class as the government's strongest supporter.
page 23 note * The Carter administration subsequently terminated military aid to Argentina.
page 24 note * It is interesting to note that while the Carter administration has strongly opposed repressive political practices in Latin America, it has reaffirmed its support for the International Monetary fund, whose fiscally conservative economic policies have induced the governments of Argentina. Chile, and Uruguay to reduce the real income of their workers 30 to 50 percent. More important, the IMF's economic policies have clear political implications. As one Uruguayan businessman candidly admitted to me: "There is no way you can force that kind of declining standard of living on the labor force without first destroying their unions and denying them the right to bargain collectively and strike."
