Juan Maria Bordaberry, 83, the former president-turned- dictator whose self-coup launched more than a decade of military rule in Uruguay, died Sunday in his home, where he was serving a sentence for leading efforts to eliminate leftist dissent in the 1970s.
Bordaberry had been suffering from breathing problems and other illnesses that kept him from serving the 30-year sentence in prison. A wealthy conservative landowner, Bordaberry was elected president in 1971 during a chaotic time in Uruguay, when wealthy elites and leftist Tupamaro guerrillas both saw armed revolution as a real path to power.
The Tupamaros were already crushed when Uruguayans awoke to tanks surrounding the legislative palace on the cold winter day of June 27, 1973. The military had become so powerful that Bordaberry had to give up control in order to survive politically.
Rather than lose a minor political fight in Congress, he suspended the constitution, banned political parties, ordered tanks into the streets and ruled by decree until the generals ousted him anyway three years later. Democracy wasn’t restored until 1985.
On Nov. 16, 2006, a judge ordered Bordaberry to be arrested for the killings of four Uruguayans who had fled to Argentina. Weeks later, another judge added charges of especially aggravated homicide in the killings of 10 leftist detainees.
Both sets of crimes were determined to be beyond the scope of the amnesties that protected both military figures and former guerrillas. He was eventually sentenced to the maximum 30 years in prison in February 2010 for violating the constitution by leading the coup.
