Aparicio Mendez

Aparicio Méndez Manfredini (Rivera, August 24, 1904 - Montevideo, June 27, 1988) was a Uruguayan lawyer, professor, politician and dictator who ruled the country de facto between 1976 and 1981.

Early Years

Aparicio Méndez was born on August 24, 1904, in the city of Rivera, in the north of the country. His parents were Regino Méndez and Jacinta Manfredini Pérez, both aligned with the National Party and who gave him the name Aparicio in honor of the leader of said party Aparicio Saravia, who in those months was fighting in the Revolution 1904. When he was born, his father was 19 years old and his mother 16. He had four siblings.

Career

Graduated as a doctor, he became a specialist in administrative law and professor of said subject at the Faculty of Law of the University of the Republic between 1934 and 1955. He withdrew from university teaching as a result of a confrontation with the student union, who accused him of apologizing Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy in class. However, he acquired great prestige, even internationally, as a jurist. Some of his books in this field, such as The Hierarchy , The Organ Theory , and Organ Systems are still used academically and academic.

Militant in the National Party, he was a member of the Electoral Court in the 1940s and Minister of Public Health during the first and second white collegiate between 1961 and 1964. In 1971 he approached the Movement for the Homeland; After the elections were held in November of that year, Méndez presented a plea challenging the elections for alleged fraud.

Dictatorship

Dissolved Parliament in 1973, he was appointed by the civil-military dictatorship as a member of the Council of State, the body with which the regime replaced the General Assembly. In 1974 he became president of this body.

In 1976 he was appointed President of the Republic by the National Council (a body supervised by the Armed Forces), a position he assumed on September 1, signing, among others, Institutional Act No. 4 (act that Alberto Demicheli did not want to subscribe) that prohibited the political participation of 15,000 citizens for fifteen years.

On June 19, 1977, the 213th anniversary of the birth of the national hero José Gervasio Artigas, Méndez presided over the ceremony to transfer the remains of the hero to the new mausoleum in the Plaza Independencia in Montevideo, in a controversial gesture of exaltation of the figure of the republican hero to legitimize a civic-military dictatorship.

During his tenure, a 1980 plebiscite was held that sought to modify the Constitution to legitimize the dictatorial regime, which was rejected by the electorate, allowing a slow process of democratic opening.

On September 1, 1981, he was replaced by a general, Gregorio Álvarez, former head of the army.

He died on June 27, 1988 in Montevideo, coincidentally coinciding with the fifteenth anniversary of the coup.

Ministers

Ministers who acted in his government