After breaking away from the Broad Front in early 1989, the PDC and PGP joined with the Civic Union (Unión Cívica--UC) to form a coalition called the Integration Movement (Movimiento de Integración--MI). The MI nominated the PGP leader, Batalla--a senator, journalist, and lawyer--as its 1989 presidential candidate. On July 24, these three social democratic parties comprising the MI--the PGP, PDC, and UC--formally created a leftof -center electoral alliance within the MI called the New Sector (Nuevo Espacio), which reaffirmed Batalla as its presidential candidate.

Juan Guillermo Young and Carlos Vassallo, dissidents from the conservative Civic Union of Uruguay (Unión Cívica del Uruguay-- UCU), a Catholic party founded in 1912, founded the PDC in 1962, when the UCU officially became the PDC. A left-of-center party, the PDC advocated social transformation through democratic means. The PDC soon fractionalized. In 1971, when the PDC joined with the PCU and PSU in the Broad Front, PDC dissidents, including former UCU members, broke away and formed the UC, an anti-Marxist social Christian party. The UC recognized a Christian democratic faction that also split from the PDC in 1980. From November 1982 to August 1984, the military regime banned the PDC for its policy of casting blank ballots.

In the second half of the 1980s, the UC was divided between its traditional sector, the Progressive Faction (Corriente Progresista), led by Humberto Ciganda and made up of other longtime leaders; the Renewal Faction (Corriente Renovadora), led by members of the Chamber of Representatives Julio Daverede and Heber Rossi Passina; the UC secretary general, Héctor Pérez Piera; and youth leaders. One leader of the UC's Progressive Faction, the late Juan Vicente Chiarino, served as Sanguinetti's defense minister. The withdrawal of the UC's presidential candidate, Ciganda, from the November 1989 elections widened the split within the party.

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Source: U.S. Library of Congress