Frente Amplio was founded as a coalition of more than a dozen fractured leftist parties and movements in 1971. The first president of the front and its first candidate for the presidency of the country was GeneralLiber Seregni. The front was declared illegal during the 1973 military coup d'état and emerged again in 1984 when democracy was restored in Uruguay.
In 1994 Progressive Encounter (Encuentro Progresista) was formed by several minor independent factions and the Frente Amplio. EP and FA started contesting elections jointly under the name Encuentro Progresista - Frente Amplio. Later another force, Nuevo Espacio, became linked to the front. Thus it started contesting elections as Encuentro Progresista - Frente Amplio - Nueva Mayoria.
In 2005 member organizations of Progressive Encounter and New Majority (essentially Nuevo Espacio) merged into the front, and the coalition took the name of the larger force, Frente Amplio. Previously, EP and later NM had been allied with FA but organizationally separate structures.
Starting with the election of Luis Alberto Lacalle of the National Party in 1989, economic reform designed to quickly modernize the country began, which led to a devaluing of the peso and laws protecting banking secrecy. This secrecy led to Uruguayan banks becoming a place to launder money from drug and other illegal businesses. By the turn of the century, half the nation had to survive in the informal economy. In 2002, the economic crisis of Brazil and Argentina spread to Uruguay, which crashed as a result of lacking productive power. In August of that year, the nation received 1.5 billion US dollars from the IMF to try and help with the crisis. This was the state of the nation when the Broad Front began campaigning for the 2004 election.[10]
The Broad Front firmly established itself as the country's third major political force at the 1994 elections. Its presidential candidate, Tabaré Vázquez, who replaced longtime leader Seregni as the party's standardbearer, finished with the most votes of any individual candidate. However, under the Ley de Lemas system then in use, Vázquez was denied the presidency because the Broad Front finished with the third-most votes of any party, behind the Colorados and Blancos. At the time, the highest-finishing candidate of the party winning the most votes was elected president. At the same time, the Broad Front surged to 31 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and nine seats in the Senate.
The Ley de Lemas was scrapped for presidential elections in favor of a two-round system for the 1999 elections. Vázquez led the field in the first round but lost the runoff to the Colorados' Jorge Batlle after the two traditional parties set aside their long rivalry to defeat him. At the same time, the Broad Front became the largest party in the legislature.
2004 election: Tabaré Vazquez and economic reform
The party's victorious 2004 campaign was the first instance of a left-leaning party gaining the majority in Uruguay. Two of the major reasons the party took power in 2004 was that there was a substantial movement towards more moderate policies and that their support of an increased welfare state created a bond with working-class people tired of the neo-liberalist practices of the end of the twentieth century.[11][12]
When Tabaré Vázquez first took the position of President with a Broad Front majority in the Uruguayan congress, he quickly moved to strengthen diplomatic relations with other Latin American countries, including Cuba.[13] Important to the future success of the party is the US$100 million anti-poverty program that Vazquez signed early in his career, which helped to ensure the support of the lower class in future elections.[14] Uruguay was in need of economic reform when Vazquez stepped into power in 2005, as it was struggling to recover from the crisis of 2002 with a third of the country still below the poverty line. An important aspect of the economic development was the new Minister of Economics and Finance, Danilo Astori, who worked to create a good relationship with the IMF and obtained the foreign investment, needed to kick start a paper pulp industry.[15][16] Economic reform was also highlighted by a change in the immigration policy of the US president and increased beef exports to the European Union.[17][18]
2009 election: Mujica and social liberation
Since gaining power, the party has maintained the support of the electorate, as analysis of the 2009 election has led to some conclusions that the trust in the stable government played a large part in keeping the Broad Front in power.[19][20] After the 2009 election, former guerrilla José Mujica became president and during his time in power, a number of leftist social policies were passed. The legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and marijuana all occurred under the second consecutive Broad Front majority in the federal government.[21] As noted above, Vazquez vetoed a bill to decriminalize abortion in 2008 but the party as a whole was more supportive of the legalization.[22] Support for legal abortions was universal within the party by 2012, when all party senators voted in favor of a new bill that decriminalized the procedure within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.[23] In April 2013 same-sex marriage was passed, supported by the party who took a hard-line stance against the role of the church in legislation on the matter.[24][25] The most recent of major changes under the Mujica presidency is the legalization of marijuana, which was signed in December 2013.[26] A point of consideration for this event is that legalization was not supported by the general population, but the Broad Front still chose to act in favor of it. The economy continued to grow with Astori transitioning from Minister of Economics and Finance to Vice President, a position he used to continue to advertising Uruguay as a safe place for foreign investment.[27]
2014 election: Tabaré Vazquez is re-elected
The Broad Front has supported the re-election of Tabaré Vazquez in the 2014 election, which Vazquez won with 56,63% at the second turn, defeating National Party's candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou. During its second mandate, Vazquez faced strong criticism from the opposition because of its refusal to cut political ties with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, despite allegations of violations of human rights.
2019 election: Out of government
The Broad Front supported Daniel Martinez for the 2019 general election. Martinez arrived first at the first turn but was defeated in the run-off by Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou of the National Party (also endorsed by Colorado Party and Open Cabildo). For the first time in 15 years, the Broad Front was defeated at the polls. The party also lost its majority and in the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate, while remaining the largest party in the General Assembly.[28]
With Orsi winning and the party amassing 42.22% of all valid votes[29], a ticket with Cosse was immediately announced the same night of the primaries, ratifying a previous decision to assemble a formula that would comply with gender parity[30]. During the first round of the election, the formula was the most voted yet again, monopolizing 43.94% of the votes[31] and achieving majority in Senate without the need to secure the seat of the Vice President, though it fell two seats short of a majority in the Chamber of Representatives.
However, due to electoral law and failing to secure more than half of the votes, the election went to a second round between Orsi and the candidate of the National PartyÁlvaro Delgado, who counted with the political support of the rest of parties that formed the governing Republican Coalition as well as Eduardo Lust, from the Environmental Constitutional Party [32]. The Orsi-Cosse formula would nonetheless gather the support of minority leaders within the parties that form the Coalition, with Zaida González Legnani of the Colorado Party and Victor Björgan of the National Party announcing the support on the days preceding the second round, in the month of November[33][34].
Despite polls showing parity between the two formulas that took part in the second round, the Broad Front formula would beat their opponents by a margin of 3,9%[35], with Delgado quickly conceding the election as Orsi vowed to become a president "who calls again and again for national dialogue to find the best solutions"[36].
Under the electoral system in place at the time called Ley de Lemas system, each political party could have as many as three presidential candidates. The combined result of the votes for a party's candidates determined which party would control the executive branch, and whichever of the winning party's candidates finished in first place would be declared President this system was used form the 1942 election until the 1994 election until in 1996, a referendum amended the constitution to restrict each party to a single presidential candidate, effective from the 1999 elections.
^"Boyne, 10th Viscount, (Gustavus Michael George Hamilton-Russell) (10 Dec. 1931–14 Dec. 1995)", Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 2007-12-01, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u171277
^"A business climate that protects investment". Latin Trade. Vol. 19, no. 5. 2011. p. 91.
