Ex-guerrilla is presidential front-runner in Uruguay

Mujica also promised to leave the job of managing the economy largely in the hands of his vice presidential candidate, Sen. Daniel Astori, an economic expert seen as a stabilizing, conciliatory force.

Mujica, who spent many years in solitary confinement before he left prison as part of a general amnesty when the dictatorship ended in 1985, became a congressman, senator and then agriculture minister before he resigned to run for president last year and began rising steadily in the polls.

A campaign highlight was last month's publication of “PEPE Coloquios” (“The Sayings of Pepe”) based on 14 wide-ranging interviews he gave a Uruguayan journalist this year laying out his political philosophy in language that was anything but polished. He called politicians in neighboring Argentina “stupid” and “paranoid,” labeled Brazilian tourists “snobs,” and said Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez is an authoritarian failure as a socialist.

Mujica's opponents say they fear he will run Uruguay off the rails and form alliances with Chavez or Raul Castro in Cuba, whose communist government inspired the Tupamaru guerrilla group to commit so much political violence in the early 1970s that Uruguayans welcomed Bordaberry's dictatorship at first.

What exactly Mujica did as part of the group — whether he participated directly in kidnappings, assassinations, robberies, fires and bombings — has never been publicly established.

Lacalle has called him a “Maoist” and an “anarchist,” and run television ads praising the schools and clinics that were built during his 1990-95 presidency as “the true revolution.” Uruguay has tremendous economic potential but needs stability to persuade international investors the country is worth the risk, Lacalle said. Bordaberry, trailing badly, has tried not to openly criticize either rival while leading the Colorado Party, which will most likely encourage its followers to vote for Lacalle in a second round. He acknowledged his surname is a political liability, but said that “I don't think a son should be judged based on who his father is.”

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