Military Social Security System's Background

Brief historic summary, with refences from the beginning of the 19th. Century.

The Military Welfare System as a body, dates from February 24th, 1911 when under Law 3.739, the Military Pension Fund was created.

This law represents the culmination of the first of the steps taken to consolidate the Military Social Security System in Uruguay.

As a matter of fact, during the pre-constitutional period various norms were promulgated meaning to protect the personnel of the Armed Forces and their families. For instance, we can point out to a law of March 13th 1829 concerning "Disablement, widowhood and orphanhood" caused by the Independence War. This norms were later unified on March 19th 1835 and May 3rd 1837.

Also a law of June 14th, 1830 officially recognized the "prize" given by the General Congress of the United Provinces on May 23rd 1826 to Lavalleja and "the thirty two men under his command who started the heroic enterprise of freeing this Province". This meant the beginning of special prizes or conceded pensions to certain people.

Later on, the 1830's Constitution gave power to the Executive Power to concede pensions to civilians and military personnel and their families. This is still valid under numeral 3 of Article 168 of the present Constitution.

So it was already from early times that the differences between the civil and the military activities were appreciated; differences deserving social security systems of different nature.

Therefore, we can say that from the beginning, the military retirement program had a special characteristic: its autonomy. Actually, it has since then been growing as an independent program of social security, organized by its own regulations with no connection whatsoever to other welfare systems in existence.