Silvia Nane, former senator of the Broad Front, ultra-feminist, communist activist, and current Director of Sustainable and Intelligent Development of the Montevideo City Hall (yes, the same one who collects her hefty salary with money from all Montevideans), had a moment of involuntary lucidity. In a recent interview on VTV, she bluntly stated: “We are in a situation where it is very difficult to be a leftist government. The advance of the far-right has left these governments very cornered, both in the media and in front of economic forces. It is a global onslaught particularly directed against the left.”
Translated into plain Uruguayan: “We are screwed because we can no longer spend like before.” Because that is, at the end of the day, what the Uruguayan left (and the global left) understands by “governing”: grabbing the state’s wallet, opening it wide, and distributing it as if it were confetti at carnival. Without other people's money to squander on plans, subsidies, political positions, friendly NGOs, and pure clientelism, the house of cards collapses.
And here comes the brutal honesty that anyone with two brain cells can detect: Nane is not talking about efficiency, productive investment, or results. She is confessing that the leftist model depends on unlimited money to distribute. When there is no fat cow (or when the cow is already thin because it has been milked for 15 consecutive years), “it is very difficult.” It’s not that they are bad managers… it’s that without waste, they don’t function.
Let’s remember recent history, because memory is short but numbers don’t lie:
• During the three governments of the Broad Front (2005-2020), public spending grew like foam. Ministries were created, directorates multiplied, state staffing inflated, and subsidies were handed out lavishly. It worked while soy was worth gold and the world lent us cheap money.
