URUGUAY, once South America’s most prosperous country, plays host to an unlikely gathering of left-wing leaders tomorrow as it prepares to break with 170 years of history and swear in its first socialist President.

Tabaré Vázquez, a 65-year-old professor of medicine who was elected last October with 50 per cent of the vote, will be inaugurated as head of the Broad Front coalition, whose biggest component is a party founded by the former Marxist Tupamaro guerrilla movement.

The new head of the country’s Senate is José Mújica, a former Tupamaro leader who was held in a deep well for seven years by his military captors who said he would be executed if the guerrillas killed any more military officers.

With Uruguay joining most of its neighbours in voting the Left into power, Washington loses one of its few remaining close allies in the region. The most visible sign of this change will be the attendance at the handover of Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader and the US’s arch-enemy in the region.

Uruguay broke off relations with Cuba in 2002 after Señor Castro dismissed the outgoing President, Jorge Batlle, as a bootlicker for his support of US attempts to condemn Cuba’s human rights record at the UN. Now the new President says that he will restore relations with Cuba.

This marks another defeat for President Bush’s regional policy of trying to isolate Cuba, President Castro having seen a similar improvement in relations with Argentina and Brazil after changes of power there. “The aim of the Bush Administration in the region was to isolate Cuba. Instead it has ended up isolating itself,” says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington think-tank that focuses on US-Latin American relations.

Also expecting a warm welcome in Montevideo is Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chávez, described by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, as a destabilising influence in the region.

Señor Chávez hopes to quickly conclude a beef-for-oil swap with Uruguay’s new Government, similar to one he recently signed with Argentina.

The Venezuelan leader is an open advocate of deepening ties among South American countries to counteract Washington’s influence in the region.

Señor Chávez recently stated his aim of reducing Venezuelan oil exports to the US, currently its main market, and wants to shift them to Asia. He also has ambitions to create a South American oil giant, to be called Petrosur, which would be an alliance of the state oil companies of Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina.

The recent rise of the Left in South America has been fuelled by deep discontent at free market reforms sponsored by the US during the 1990s which are widely blamed in the region for financial crises, a widening gap between rich and poor and a growth in poverty.

The new Government in Montevideo has promised to move rapidly to tackle the country’s social crisis. Despite the economy expanding by more than 12 per cent last year, a four-year recession that ended in 2002 has left an estimated one in three people in poverty. Señor Vázquez’s first act as President will be to set up a $100 million social emergency plan.

Another priority will be to tackle the legacy of the country’s dirty war between the former military government and leftist opponents. Señor Vázquez has ruled out reopening legal proceedings against former and serving officers.

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