Montevideo (Uruguay), 1880 – 1969
By Gerardo Caetano Hargain
In the context of attempts to establish a Socialist Party in Uruguay during the 1890s and the early years of the 20th century, Emilio Frugoni’s involvement in socialism marked a milestone in the entire process. Born into a well-off family, the son of a Genoese merchant, Frugoni’s first political activism occurred within the ranks of the Colorado Party. He briefly participated on the government’s side during the revolution of 1897. Along with José E. Rodó and Carlos Reyles, he was a key figure in the Colorado Libertad Club and again supported the government during the 1904 revolution, first enlisting as a national guard and later serving as an aide in the General Staff. This second experience as a direct participant in a civil war had a profound impact on his political convictions, leading him to distance himself from the Colorado Party and redirect his ideas towards socialist proposals. By then, he was already a prominent figure in Montevideo’s intellectual circles: a law student, poet, and polemicist. By the second half of 1904, he was affiliated with the Socialist Workers’ Center, an institution that organized a public conference titled “Socialist Profession of Faith” on December 22 of that year, at the headquarters of Nova Estrela d’Italia.
In 1910, Frugoni became the first Socialist Party deputy to win an election, within a coalition with the Liberal Party. He became a central figure in Uruguayan political and cultural life: he served as a legislator on several occasions between 1911 and 1942, as a constituent in 1917, as the first professor of Labor Legislation at the University of the Republic, as dean of the Faculty of Law between 1932 and 1933 (a position from which, along with students, he resisted the 1933 coup d’état), as plenipotentiary minister of Uruguay to the Soviet Union between 1944 and 1946, as a journalist, poet, and essayist, author of numerous ideological, political, and literary works, and as the general secretary of his party for decades, among many other significant achievements in his life.
As the undisputed leader of the Uruguayan Socialist Party from its founding until the 1950s, he promoted a liberal, Atlanticist socialism that was strongly critical of Uruguay’s traditional parties, European in its main inspirations, critical of the Soviet experience (he had to confront the emerging communists who defended Leninist theses in 1920 and 1921, and he was defeated at that time), and a staunch advocate of the necessary reconciliation between socialism and democracy. As the author of countless doctrinal books, as a genuine socialist ideologue, he lost his party’s hegemony in the late 1950s. In 1962, he broke with the Socialist Party and rejected its ties with factions that split from the National Party in the brief and disappointing experience of the Unión Popular. Shortly thereafter, he founded the Socialist Movement, leading it in the 1966 elections in a coalition with the Socialist Party. On that occasion, already in his eighties, he did not hesitate to sell his famous library so that his movement could afford an electoral campaign, which ended in a harsh defeat. He died in August 1969 at the age of 89, banned along with his party, as Uruguay was beginning to enter the dark times of authoritarianism. Carlos Quijano paid tribute to him with the following words:
“[…] No one can take away from Frugoni his honorable place in the history of the continent, […] of the country […] of socialism. A teacher of life and […] of hope, he taught us, through his example, to persevere without triumph: the virtue of pride and the value of modesty. Frugoni also taught us that Marxism […] is the only fruitful humanism and the highest idealism. And he revealed to us how love for the land and its people can be both a wound and a joy. […]”
Published on 01/16/2017 13:45, Content updated on 07/08/2017 14:43.
