Julio María Sanguinetti Coirolo (; born 6 January 1936 in Montevideo, Uruguay) is a Uruguayan politician, lawyer and journalist, who twice served as President of Uruguay (from March 1985 until March 1990, and again, from March 1995 until March 2000) for the Partido Colorado. A lawyer and journalist by profession, he was born into a middle-class family of Italian origin from Genoa. He studied Law and Social Sciences at the University of the Republic. He received his law degree in 1961, and later combined his legal practice with work as a journalist. He had already been writing for the press, first in the weekly Canelones and later, since 1955, as a columnist for Acción, a newspaper established by the then-President, Luis Batlle, for which he covered events such as the Cuban Revolution (1959) and carried on until the 1970s. Both media outlets were connected to the Colorado Political Party (Partido Colorado - PC), the historical liberal grouping where progressive and conservative sensitivities shared ground (a mixture of doctrines and styles that was frequently an obstacle to classifying it according to ideology) and which had as its rival the experienced National Party (PN) or Blancos ("Whites"), creating a 2-party system that dominated Uruguayan politics during its history, although on most occasions the governing force was the PC. Early biography In 1963, when he was 27 years old, Sanguinetti became a member of the Chamber of Representative for Montevideo. In 1964 he was a member of the Uruguayan delegation that participated in the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. In 1966 he served as a member of the drafting group and informer on Constitutional Reform and from 1967 he was a member of the advisory group of Colorado President Jorge Pacheco on affairs related to the Organization of American States (OEA). Later on, in 1969, Pacheco appointed him as Minister for Industry and Commerce, a position which he occupied until 1971, when he was appointed Head of the Uruguayan Trade Mission to the USSR. He also became Deputy Editor of Acción. In March 1972, the new President, also from the PC Party, Juan María Bordaberry, brought him to the government once again as Minister for Education and Culture. That same year, Sanguinetti was a founding member of the National Commission for the Historical, Artistic and Cultural Heritage of the Nation. Civilian-military administration 1973-1985 The breach