MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Former Uruguayan President-turned-dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry died early Sunday at home, where he was serving a 30-year sentence for killings and disappearances during his country's war against so-called subversives. He was 83.
Bordaberry had been suffering from breathing problems and other illnesses before he died. His son, Sen. Pedro Bordaberry, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.
Elected in 1971, Bordaberry was a wealthy, conservative landholder who cut short his democratic term with a June 27, 1973 auto-coup carried out with military backing. He suspended the constitution, banned political parties, ordered tanks to ring Congress and ruled for three years by decree until his 1976 ouster by generals who went on to lead a right-wing dictatorship until 1985.
After his ouster, Bordaberry lived quietly for decades out of public view until his arrest on Nov. 17, 2006, when a push for human rights investigations under leftist President Tabare Vazquez led to his indictment for a total of 14 deaths and disappearances.
He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in February 2010 for violating the constitution by leading the coup, and had been serving the sentence at home due to his age and respiratory problems.
Bordaberry's arrest marked the beginning of efforts by the small South American country to end impunity for those responsible for the disappearances and torture of hundreds of Uruguayans, and the exile of thousands of political dissidents. Investigative judges linked him to the abductions and killings in May 1976 of leftist Sen. Zelmar Michelini and House leader Hector Gutierrez of the traditional National Party. The prominent lawmakers had fled to Buenos Aires, where they were seized from their homes. Their bullet-riddled bodies and those of suspected Uruguayan guerrillas William Whitelaw and Rosario Barredo were found days later.
Human rights groups maintain they were killed as part of Operation Condor, a secret pact between the dictatorships that ruled much of South America at the time to eliminate political opponents who had fled to neighboring countries.
Bordaberry's family considered him to be a victim of political pressure from Vazquez and his Broad Front, a coalition of center-left parties, unions and social movements that has governed Uruguay since 2005.
Born in June 1928, Bordaberry was elected as a National Party senator in 1962, but later switched to the Colorados and was named agriculture minister in 1969 before winning the presidential race two years later. Uruguay was gripped by political and economic instability at the time, fomented by a series of attacks by the leftist Tupamaro guerrillas, who then believed that armed revolution was their best path to power.
The Tupamaros were crushed soon after the cold day in 1973 when Uruguayans awoke to tanks surrounding the Legislative Palace. Bordaberry's self-coup had devastating consequences for Uruguay, which didn't recover its democracy for 13 more years.