The principal argument of this book is that the progressive Uruguay created by Batlle y Ordóñez has been destroyed, along with the nations economy, by the oligarchy which has held power since 1933 and that if Batlle were alive today in Uruguay he would be a revolutionary. A closely related argument is that in Uruguay’s history the oligarchy has smothered the economic and social conquests of the two popular leaders, Artigas and Batlle, but that Batlle, building on Artigas, created mass political consciousness. Therefore, popular revolution soon will destroy today’s brutal, corrupt, and inept oligarchy, “. . .los banqueros, los latifundistas-estancieros, los grandes empresarios, financistas y comerciantes.” A third, incompletely developed argument is that Uruguay should be considered a typical case of Latin American dependency, and Batlle one of a panoply of Latin American reformers.
The book is based on a few, readily available sources—except for 1919 newspaper accounts—on Batlle and is weak on how later developments came about. Its interest is as a political pamphlet and as a testimony to Uruguay’s present generalized crisis. Its view that Batlle is a hero to contemporary revolutionaries is an Uruguayan example of the continental attempt to construct a usable past which, rather than dismissing previous popular leaders as bourgeois politicians, argues for today’s revolutionaries as their true continuers.
