By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 7 2000 (IPS)

The Uruguayan government relieved general Manuel Fernández of his post as head of the Armed Forces Joint Chiefs Thursday after he stated that the counter-insurgency war of the 1970s had not ended and that the military would once again take up arms.

National Defence minister Luis Brezzo reported that general Fernández had been arrested and is being held incommunicado at the army’s general command, where he will remain in custody until further notice.

The removal of Fernández, ordered by president Jorge Batlle in his role as commander in chief of the armed forces, occurred just hours after the weekly newspaper ‘Búsqueda’ published an interview with the general.

“Sooner or later we are going to have to fight again” because “things are turning from light to dark,” Fernández told Búsqueda.

He also said that in Uruguay there was never an “end to the hostilities,” referring to the conflict with the urban guerrilla force, the National Liberation Movement-Tupamaros, which military leaders themselves affirmed they had defeated in 1972, one year before the coup that initiated the nation’s military dictatorship (1973-1985).

Fernández identified the armed forces’ “enemies” as teachers and professors, unions and forces “aligned with the old Marxist- Leninist doctrine.” He also said that the country is enveloped in “chaos, about which there is little to debate.”

The general said the military has not changed its stance in the last 15 years and would still reject any review of what occurred during the dictatorship or investigations into the fate of the people who were detained-disappeared during that period.

But his attitude is in stark contrast to that of his colleague, retired lieutenant-general and former army chief Daniel García. He said it would be “fantastic” if all individuals involved in the confrontations of the 1970s “requested forgiveness for the errors committed.”

It would be a step in the right direction if all “actors in those sad years for society” asked for forgiveness, García told IPS. The retired officer served as commander of the army under former president Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995).

He added that it would be “perfect” if Batlle were to apologise on behalf of the government for the “excesses” committed by the military under the dictatorship.

The suggestion was seen as a change in attitude among high- ranking military leaders by the president of the Senate Defence Commission, Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, member of the parliament’s majority coalition, the centre-left Progressive Assembly-Broad Front.

Fernández Huidobro, a legendary Tupamaro leader, told IPS that the “rapid and conclusive” sanction imposed on general Fernández is also proof that the new government under Batlle is willing to take action against military indiscipline.

“What Batlle has done on this issue is very positive, very different from the stance of (former president Julio María) Sanguinetti,” he commented.

The leftist senator believes the government’s response will lead to a similar opening in the armed forces, and agreed with lieutenant-general García that all individuals who were involved in the dark events of the dictatorship must assume responsibility.

“President Batlle himself initiated this path in his inaugural speech before parliament when he said that we are all responsible for the confrontations of the past, as he looked at those who surrounded him at that moment, which included leaders from all political parties, military officers and international authorities,” Fernández Huidobro said.

“It is easy to ask for forgiveness,” said the former Tupamaro, “the difficult part is to grant it, and many of us will be at that crossroads in the near future.”

In his statements before Congress when he took office March 1, Batlle committed himself to creating a climate for “sealing peace” among Uruguayans, thus underscoring his major difference with former president Sanguinetti, both from the long-lived centrist Colorado Party.

This government’s inclination to respond to the demands for information by families of the Uruguayans who were “disappeared” by the dictatorship – some 150 people, most in Argentina – was evident March 31 when it announced that Argentine poet Juan Gelman’s granddaughter had been found.

This confirmed Gelman’s claims that his grandchild had been born in a military hospital in Montevideo after the mother – Gelman’s daughter-in-law María Claudia García Irureta Goyenta – had been detained in Buenos Aires and moved to Uruguay under Operation Condor, the co-ordination of the repressive forces of Latin America’s Southern Cone dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.

The announcement fed hopes among human rights organisation and leftist political sectors that investigations into the whereabouts of others would be pursued.

But retired officer García told IPS that, though he was extremely happy that Gelman found his granddaughter, he doubted that much will be learned about the fates of the adults who disappeared during the dictatorship because it “is highly unlikely that any military officer would have the courage to provide the information.”

The former head of the army believes his colleagues fear that coming forward would not be recognised as a positive gesture by society and that they would be subject to persecution.

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