Luis Alberto Lacalle

Luis Alberto Lacalle de Herrera, GCMG (Lacalle locally or ; born 13 July 1941) is a Uruguayan politician and lawyer who served as the 36th president of Uruguay from 1990 to 1995.

Lacalle in was born in Montevideo on 13 July 1941, the son of Carlos Pedro Lacalle Nuñez and María Hortensia de Herrera de Lacalle.

He is of Basque and Spanish descent.

His mother was the daughter of Luis Alberto de Herrera, a prominent politician of the National Party.

He attended Colegio Seminario and joined the National Party at the age of 17.

Lacalle endorsed his grandfather Luis Alberto de Herrera in the 1958 election, in which the National Party obtained a historic victory after 93 years in the opposition and became the ruling political group in the National Council of Government.

A member of the National Party, he previously served as National Representative from 1959 to 1967, and as Senator of the Republic from 1985 to 1990.

Lacalle was born and raised in Montevideo.

He is the grandson of Luis Alberto de Herrera who led the National Party and founded one of its most prominent sectors.

In 1961 he started working as a journalist for Clarín, writing articles and columns.

He attended the Jesuit Colegio Seminario and graduated from the University of the Republic in 1964 with a law degree.

In his youth he worked as a journalist in some media outlets.

He graduated from the University of the Republic's law school in 1964.

In the 1971 election, he was elected National Representative for the Montevideo Department and kept his seat until the 1973 coup, when President Juan María Bordaberry dissolved parliament.

Lacalle Herrera was an opponent of the civil-military dictatorship and was imprisoned for several weeks.

When he was released he was part of the clandestine opposition to the regime.

From 1972 to 1973 he served as National Representative for the Montevideo Department, but lost his seat after the dissolution of parliament with the coup d'état carried out by President Juan María Bordaberry.

In August 1978 Lacalle was sent three bottles of wine tainted with poison addressed to himself and two fellow National Party members (Mario Heber and Carlos Julio Pereyra) who had been trying to negotiate a way out of the military regime.

Lacalle's wife warned him against the suspicious gift, but Heber's wife drank a glass, dying immediately.

The case remains unsolved.

He campaigned for the "NO" option in the 1980 constitutional referendum.

In 1981, within the framework of the campaign for the 1982 primary elections in which there was a greater democratic opening, Lacalle founded the Congreso Nacional Herrerista, a sector within the National Party.

In the 1984 general election that ended the dictatorship, he endorsed Alberto Zumarán for president, who was defeated by Julio María Sanguinetti.

However, Lacalle was elected Senator of the Republic.

Following the 1984 election, Lacalle served as Senator of the Republic in the 42nd Legislature.

In 1987 he was appointed vice president of the Senate.

In this period he increased his political profile and began to be compared to John F. Kennedy.

Lacalle was elected president in the 1989 election, which marked the return of the National Party to government since it was the ruling political group in the National Council of Government from 1963 to 1967, and the first election of a president for that party since Bernardo Prudencio Berro in 1860.

His presidency was characterized by a liberal economic policy in line with the Washington Consensus.

He carried out a fiscal adjustment and a reform to state-owned companies to deregulate them.

This earned him opposition from the left and the union movement.

In foreign policy, the Lacalle government signed the Treaty of Asunción that established the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR).

In 1989 he ran for the presidency for his faction, Herrerismo, with Gonzalo Aguirre as his running-mate.

In the 1989 general election, governed by the Ley de Lemas system, Lacalle received the most votes within his party, which was the most voted political group, and therefore, he was elected President of Uruguay.

He took office on March 1, 1990 for a five-year term.

After leaving office in 1995, Lacalle continued in active politics.

In 1999 he ran for president again, finishing in third place.

In 2004 he ran in the National Party presidential primaries, but was defeated by Jorge Larrañaga, who was the party's candidate in the general election.

In 2009 he was a presidential candidate again but was defeated in the second round by the Broad Front nominee, José Mujica, who was elected president.

With the victory of his son, Luis Lacalle Pou, in the 2019 general election, the two became the third father–son pair to serve as the nation's president.