Feliciano Viera

He was a member of the Colorado Party and closely identified with the liberal former president José Batlle y Ordóñez, who long dominated Uruguayan political life. Prior to becoming president, Viera served Batlle's second government as interior minister. He served as the President of the Senate of Uruguay from 1907 to 1912.[2]

He was President of Uruguay from 1915 to 1919. Among prominent figures who served in his administration was Baltasar Brum, who occupied the interior and subsequently the foreign affairs ministry.

Uruguay was more closely identified with the Allied cause in World War I than was neighbouring Argentina, cutting diplomatic relations with the German Empire in late 1917. On September 8, 1917, Viera received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor of France.

A number of reforms were carried out during Viera's presidency. A law enacted at the end of 1915 established that the effective work of workers in various establishments such as shipyards and factories “could not last more than eight hours.” The average term of daily work could be increased, but on condition “that it never exceed the legal maximum of 48 hours for every six days of work,” while “No factory, company or house could use workers who worked in another establishment during the maximum hours authorized by law.” A 1918 law prohibited night work in various food-making establishments such as bakeries, with fines in cases of infractions and recidivism. In terms of social welfare, a law ordered “that police stations and barracks provide food to every inhabitant of the country who was without work and who lacked means of subsistence.”[3] A 1919 law established minimum annual pensions; partially aimed at helping those who were indigent and disabled. In 1916, the Assembly resolved declare a national holiday on May the 1st as a labor holiday.[4] Decrees of the 25th of June 1915 made specific provision “for the safety of railway employees and those engaged in factories, mines and quarries using explosive substances.” In addition, a decree of the 15th of November 1918 provided specific regulation of working conditions in the mines.[5] In 1916, The Executive Power requested and obtained the establishment of two secondary schools in Montevideo, while another law accorded high school students who had completed the four years of the secondary school curriculum “the right to enter the Schools of Comercio, Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine and in secondary education courses.”[6] A law of 1916 abolished tuition and examination fees for regulated secondary school students, while authorizing the Executive Branch “to extend the franchise to all regulated or free students, once the state of finances permitted it.”[7] In 1918 the first law for the safeguarding of employed women and children was adopted, which required the provision of seats for such workers.[8] That same year the Executive Power was authorized in “to build municipal laundries in all the cities of the coastal and interior departments.”[9] A law was enacted which children under the two years of age “who were given to wet nurses outside the parents' home were placed under the surveillance of the State, in order to ensure their life and health,”[10] and emergency services were improved through a new regulation “of first aid on public roads, at home and in any other place where it was necessary.”[11]

In assessing his government’s record, Viera argued that: “During my administration as president ...... I made an effort to carry out the Colorado program, especially in its constitutional part, accepting for this purpose all that conjuration of passions provoked against us by the essential points of the reformist program: the multiple Executive and the separation of the Church and the State. We accept and contribute to the same degree to its success – many social laws. The Working Day, the Night Work, the Old Age Pensions, the Right to Life, all these problems of urgent solution, because the interest of the humble classes so required, were resolved during my government. Legislative action also tended to perfect our legislation on divorce, to improve the fate of natural children, to apply a more humane and scientific interest in the criminal solutions of our time, advocating in this regard that the conditional sentence be an institute of our legal organization.”[12]

In 1919 Viera relinquished the presidency and was succeeded by Baltasar Brum. He then became chairman of the National Council of Administration (prime minister), holding the post until 1921.

He died on 13 November 1927, aged 55.

• Politics of Uruguay