Independent National Party (Uruguay)

The Independent National Party (Partido Nacional Independiente), also known locally as Independent Nationalism (Nacionalismo Independiente), was a political party in Uruguay.

The party was founded as a rejection of the caudillo personalism represented in the National Party by the figure of Herrera, and had two important journalistic spokespersons: the morning newspaper El País and the evening newspaper El Plata, which, as noted by one study, “at a certain point expressed different and opposite nuances, even within Independent Nationalism.” The group was not perfectly homogeneous, with one observer at the time noting that “it is made up of small and great trends that vary from reactionism to those that support more radical ideas. (...) It's not possible to harmonize on the same tuning fork those who have been enemies of the minimum wage and those who have defended it as an essential necessity.” The Independent Nationalist Party maintained a firm opposition to the regime of Gabriel Terra, but after the Second World War, as noted by one study, “it was characterized by its growing identification with the politics of the United States, as well as its increasingly conservative positions on economic-social matters.”

Among its most prominent members were: Martín C. Martínez, Washington Beltrán Mullin, and Juan A. Ramírez.