Álvaro Delgado, the “romantic” veterinarian and lover of the countryside who wants to be president of Uruguay

( Spanish) – His three children call him “fat”, he defines himself as a romantic, he likes Ricardo Arjona, and what he enjoys most is the countryside: horseback riding with his dogs and the sunrise. He was secretary of the Presidency of the outgoing Government of President Luis Lacalle Pou and became known to the public as the great communicator during the covid-19 pandemic. Álvaro Luis Delgado Ceretta, a 55-year-old veterinarian, wants to be the next president of Uruguay, for the National Party.

When the pandemic broke out in March 2020, a few days after taking office as the president’s right-hand man, few knew Álvaro Delgado. But, almost unintentionally, he became a kind of spokesperson for the worst news during those times, in the regular press conferences broadcast on all channels. “I had to announce the first death, who was a friend of mine and the President of the Republic,” he said in an interview with the FM Del Sol program Protagonistas. The unwanted popularity of those press conferences was, according to analysts, the platform that built his presidential candidacy.

Born in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, he studied primary and secondary school in private bilingual schools and his love for the countryside led him to study Veterinary Medicine. It was while he was pursuing that career that he became linked to student unionism, as a representative of one of the university currents historically linked to the National Party (center-right). Since then, he has always remained a political activist in that party, which he joined, he says, “almost without realizing it,” impacted by the nationalist leader Wilson Ferreira Aldunate.

While studying, he worked as a collector in the laboratory of his mother, who is a pharmaceutical chemist. But his vocations were other: the countryside and politics. He became involved and began to invest in agriculture, influenced by his maternal grandfather, from the department of Paysandú, bordering Argentina, with whom he felt “very identified.” “My connection with my maternal grandfather’s field conditioned me,” he told the Protagonistas program. “With everything I saved, plus a loan that I always asked my father for, I bought cows, I partnered with my grandfather, I bought sheep. I always tried to invest to build capital. That’s how I bought the first car, which my father lent me the money for, and then I returned it to him. “My parents have been very generous in that sense,” he recalled in an article with Galería magazine.

But, in addition to being a business, he says that the field is his place in the world. “The countryside gives you a lot of peace. In the morning, very early, I like to see it because the dew is there and it begins to dawn.” “There should be nothing more beautiful and freer than saddling up and going out into the countryside to ride a horse,” he added in the long radio interview.

At the beginning of the nineties, at the same Veterinary Faculty where he found his political vocation, he also met what would be his girlfriend for five years and, since 1997, his wife: Laura Lateulade. With her he had three children: Agustina, Felipe and Pilar, aged 25, 23 and 21. “I thank God and life for the family I have,” he said. He is Catholic and says he goes to mass less than he would like. “And sometimes I pray alone before going to sleep. It is a matter, perhaps, of personal connection, more than asking, of thanking,” he explained to Galería.

A slow-speaking, joking man who says he likes to give people pseudonyms and, therefore, they give them to him too: his children call him “Gordo” and also “Candi” (for the candidate); Outside the family they also call him “Tero” or simply “Alvarito”.

His first political position was during the worst crisis in the country’s history, as inspector general of Labor, between 2000 and 2004. After that he was an opposition deputy and senator between 2005 and 2020, during the three terms of the Frente Amplio (left). And, in 2020, he joined the ruling party along with his “friend, traveling companion and president Luis Lacalle Pou.”

Now he assures that he wants to be “a president who can unite Uruguayans” and overcome difficulties: “As Arjona says: ‘The gray clouds are also part of the landscape.’”

When the journalists of the radio program asked him “who is Álvaro Delgado?”, he answered: “An ordinary person, with dreams, with experience, with a lot of desire, I think with knowledge of the reality of the country… who wants to have the opportunity to leave everything to make this a good country.”