Background
Ethnicity:
Tabaré, like many other politicians in Latin America, is of Spanish background.
Born in the Montevideo neighbourhood of La Teja.
Ethnicity:
Tabaré, like many other politicians in Latin America, is of Spanish background.
Born in the Montevideo neighbourhood of La Teja.
A physician (oncologist) by training, he is a member of the leftist Frente Amplio coalition (Broad Front in English). Vázquez was elected president on October 31, 2004, took office on March 1, 2005, and relinquished the office on March 1, 2010. As president, Vázquez presided over considerable improvements in education and working conditions, a significant expansion of the welfare system, and a dramatic reduction in poverty,[4] with the percentage of Uruguayans living in poverty falling from 32% to 20% of the population from 2004 to 2009.
A member of the Socialist party, he won election as mayor of Montevideo in 1989 as the candidate of the Broad Front, a left-wing coalition. He lost presidential elections in 1994 and 1999, but ran strongly in the latter contest, and when he ran again in 2004 he won. As president, he has attempted to fight poverty and revive Uruguay's flagging economy and has undertaken investigations of human-rights violations committed during military rule in the 1970s and 80s. Vázquez has rejected many of the more extreme free-market reforms in 1990, advocating instead a synthesis of socialist principles with market-friendly policies.
Quotations:
“I invite you, from my sentiments, my convictions and my responsibilities, to work together in the construction of a Uruguay where being young is not suspicious, where aging is not a problem.”
“It's not enough to have economic growth. You have to distribute wealth throughout all of society.”
“The left has not been impermeable to the neo-liberal cultural revolution, and has incorporated some of its elements, like the need for fiscal balance, open trade and competitiveness.”
Vázquez is married to María Auxiliadora Delgado and has three biological children with her (Ignacio, Álvaro and Javier) and an adopted son (Fabián).
