Tabaré Vázquez

Vásquez, Tabaré (Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas) (täbärā' rämōn' väs'kĕs rô'säs), 1940-, Uruguayan political leader, first leftist president of Uruguay (2005-). He studied medicine in Uruguay and France, becoming an oncologist. A member of the Socialist party, he won election as mayor of Montevideo in 1989 as the candidate of the Broad Front, a left-wing coalition. He lost presidential elections in 1994 and 1999, but ran strongly in the latter contest, and when he ran again in 2004 he won. As president, he has attempted to fight poverty and revive Uruguay's flagging economy and has undertaken investigations of human-rights violations committed during military rule in the 1970s and 80s. Vázquez has rejected many of the more extreme free-market reforms of the 1990s, advocating instead a synthesis of socialist principles with market-friendly policies.