The first herrerismo

Conservative liberalism, international realism and ruralism (1873-1925)

Abstract

Luis Alberto de Herrera was probably the most important leader in the National Party’s almost 200 hundred years of existence, and therefore a very influential political leader in Uruguay’s 20th century history. He was both a politician and an intellectual, with a great amount of work to his credit as “ideologist”, doctrinaire thinker, historian, essayist, journalist and scholar of International Relations. Throughout this article, the aim has been to identify the fundamental notes of what we call the “first herrerismo”. In this sense, we identify its initial configuration in the early years of Herrera’s political militancy, until the year 1925, when he achieved one of his very few electoral triumphs, allowing him to become president of the National Administration Council. The three defining notes that will be emphasized are his “anti-Jacobin conservative liberalism”, his vision of a “realist” international insertion of Uruguay in the early 1900’s and his “ruralist” perspective. Therefore, in this first period of herrerismo, both the political and intellectual features of Herrera tended to converge. Those three fundamental ideological definitions coincide precisely with the publication of three of his main works during this period.