HOPE FOR FREE MARKET REFORM IN URUGUAY

ALTHOUGH THE GLOBAL media barely covered last year’s elections in Uruguay, President Luis Lacalle Pou’s victory was significant for ending 15 years of governance by the leftist Broad Front.

The president from that party from 2010 to 2015 was José “Pepe” Mujica, a former member of the violent Tupamaros guerrilla group who achieved international notoriety as a plainspoken man of the people who donated 90 percent of his called a threat to free speech. And although he legalized marijuana, Mujica included “a state-enforced oligopoly, production and consumption quotas, price-fixing, [and] coerced registrations,” as one commentator explained.