ABSTRACT
Luís Alberto Lacalle de Herrera, President of Uruguay 1990-95, was born in Montevideo in 1941 and qualified as a lawyer in 1964. The grandson of the former leader of the Partido Nacional, Luís Alberto de Herrera Quevedo, he gained a seat in the Chamber of Deputies for the party in 1971. During the military take-over in 1973 he was arrested but quickly released and spent the next 12 years working as a lawyer and engaged in clandestine agitation against the dictatorship. He survived an assassination attempt in 1978. Elected as a Senator on the return of democracy in 1984, he was chosen by his party to contest the 1989 elections, which he unexpectedly won, becoming only the third member of his party to hold the office since 1836. Though his advocacy of freemarket reforms divided his party, under his leadership Uruguay entered the Southern Common Market and benefited considerably as a result.
