Uruguay's new left accepts Cuba again without question

URUGUAY: Letter From Montevideo: Uruguay installed its first left-wing president on Tuesday, and if the country had won a third World Cup, it could not have celebrated more, writes Tom Hennigan

The party started on Monday night after dinner as people took to the street honking horns and setting off fireworks to mark the end of 170 years' rule by the two traditional parties whose roots are in the independence struggle against Spain.

By Tuesday afternoon hundreds of thousands were back on the streets, lining the traditional route from the Legislative Palace, where the swearing-in took place, down Liberator Avenue to the colonial- era Government House where Tabaré Vázquez, a 65-year-old professor of medicine, received the sash of office from the outgoing president.

Along with the crowds were South America's new generation of leftist leaders who turned out in force to celebrate. One of the stars of the show was to have been Cuba's Fidel Castro, but he had to cancel his trip at the last minute, citing health reasons. This was not surprising from a man of 78 years who only four months ago shattered a kneecap and broke an arm in a fall.

For Fidel the day held obvious potential. Here was another leftist coming to power in the West, another critic of the global financial system that he railed against in the 1990s as the region privatised and piled on debt with abandon; only to claim vindication as financial crises, default and widening poverty struck in the new millennium.

It was also a chance to rub the US's nose in Cuba's new room for diplomatic manoeuvre in the region.

As his second act in office Mr Vázquez restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, which Uruguay broke off in 2002 after Fidel denounced the Uruguayan president as a "Judas" for backing US attempts at the United Nations to scrutinise the island's human rights record.

El Comandante had been isolated diplomatically during the 1990s, but since the region started its march to the left, Fidel has had warm welcomes in Brazil and Argentina and has an eager disciple in Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

The special handling Fidel's Cuba gets from the left in South America meant that Mr Vázquez could give a well-received inaugural address which stressed human rights and the importance of liberty shortly before he restored links with Cuba without a reference to rights on the island.

"Without liberty, equality is a caricature and life has no meaning," the new president told the assembled dignitaries in his speech. It is exactly the sort of response Cuban dissidents give when supporters of Castro laud his revolution's health and education system.

Later that night I met a Uruguayan friend who lives in Buenos Aires. Though only a teenager, he had fled Montevideo during the dictatorship which ruled the country from 1973 until 1985. With the return of democracy he decided to stay on, having grown accustomed to life in the big city. But every election time he returned home across the river Plate to vote for the left and now was here to witness its moment of triumph.

He said his aunt and her granddaughter had come from Cuba, also to witness the handover. His aunt moved to Cuba in the early stages of the revolution when it attracted bright, eager people from all over Latin America, willing to help build a new society.

The aunt had a privileged position because of this background. Now whether out of loyalty or ignorance or sadness at having dedicated a life to a failed dream, she would not criticise the revolution.

But her granddaughter, more Cuban than Uruguayan, did. She gave out to her Uruguayan cousins about the restrictions on her life, such as the fact she was denied access to the internet.

What most shocked my friend, a book-collector, was his cousin telling him that in Cuba Mario Vargas Llosa, whom he considers the finest living writer in Latin America, was banned.

He was uncomfortable that a government he voted for was so concerned with rights at home while at the same time restoring links with a regime without expressing much concern for its appalling rights record.

But banning books, locking up dissidents and curbing citizens from socialising with tourists is not what many South Americans think about when they think of Cuba. The island for them really means defiance of the US, in a region where anti-Americanism runs strong.

As the crowd on Tuesday put it as the US delegation arrived at the inauguration: "Cuba sí! Yanqui no!" This can be useful on the left when the rules of the democratic game and the international system restrict your room to manoeuvre, as they do the presidents of Uruguay and Brazil. Back-slapping with Fidel helps reassure the base, nervous about left-wing finance ministers working hard with the International Monetary Fund.

But time is surely running out on such a strategy. Fidel is old, and what will follow him uncertain. And there is always the risk that, when he does go, Cubans will then take the opportunity to ask the region's leaders why they were so friendly with Fidel instead of pushing him to provide some of the liberties they hold so dear in their own countries.