Blanco Acevedo, Eduardo (1894–1971)

The Uruguayan surgeon and politician Eduardo Blanco Acevedo was born in Montevideo on March 19, 1894, and received his medical degree in 1908 from the Facultad de Medicina in Montevideo. After joining the diplomatic corps, he served as attaché to the Uruguayan embassy in France in 1909 and undersecretary at the Uruguayan embassy in Belgium in 1912. From 1914 to 1919 he worked as a surgeon in French hospitals, attending wounded troops, and was appointed chief surgeon of the Rothschild Hospital in 1915. The French government conferred on him the title of chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and he was appointed to the Parisian Society of Surgeons, as well as other French medical societies. After returning to Uruguay in 1919, he began teaching and practicing medicine and held several administrative positions in Uruguayan hospitals, as well as the post of minister of public health (1934–1936). His family was historically associated with the Colorado Party and was related to president and later dictator Gabriel Terra, whose regime, in which Blanco Acevedo participated, began March 31, 1933. When Terra's mandate ended, Blanco Acevedo was one of the candidates who hoped to succeed him in the 1938 elections. Rival candidate General Alfredo Baldomir, also from the Colorado Party, won the election, thanks, it is said, to the women's vote, exercised for the first time that year in Uruguay. Nevertheless, Blanco Acevedo's politics—Blanco Acevedismo—remained a conservative force within the Colorado Party, and Blanco Acevedo was an adviser to the Consejo Nacional de Gobierno (National Council of Government) from 1952 to 1955. His brother was the prominent historian Pablo Blanco Acevedo.

See alsoBaldomir, Alfredo; Terra, Gabriel; Uruguay, Political Parties: Colorado Party.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peña, José M. Eduardo Blanco Acevedo: historia de una vida integral. Montevideo: n.p., 1950.

Scarone, Arturo. Uruguayos Contemporáneos: Nuevo Diccio-nario de Datos Biográficos. Montevideo: A. Barreiro y Ramos, 1937.

                              JosÉ de Torres Wilson