This chapter seeks to explain why the Uruguayan military leaders who had swiftly defeated the Tupamaros guerrillas under the government of Juan María Bordaberry (democratically elected in 1972 and a dictator since June 1973) broke their alliance with the president and removed him from office in 1976. Bordaberry was a man deeply influenced by Francoism and ideas such as the superiority of natural law, Catholic religious extremism and an outright rejection of liberalism. But he failed to align the military behind his attempt to introduce institutional changes that would definitively proscribe the political parties. The chapter delves into the reasons for this outcome, which included a strong secular tradition, the historical weight of the traditional parties (Colorado and Blanco) even among the military ranks themselves—many of whose officers were direct descendants of combatants in the civil wars that had pitted both parties against each other in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the strength of the Masonry, considered by Bordaberry as his main enemy.