Jorge Batlle, the brash scion of a political dynasty who had been groomed to be president of Uruguay since he was a teenager, got elected to the post on his fifth try and then audaciously presided over a pro-American administration that survived a brush with bankruptcy, died on Monday in Montevideo. He was 88.

His death, less than two weeks after he suffered brain injuries in a fall and the day before his 89th birthday, was announced by the Uruguayan government.

Mr. Batlle (pronounced BAH-zhay), a generally revered soul of Uruguayan politics for five decades, first sought the presidency in 1966 and then was barred from electoral politics by the ruling military dictatorship. After three more tries he won a five-year term in 1999. (The country’s Constitution does not allow consecutive terms.)

When he took office, in 2000, he was the country’s first civilian president since the military relinquished power in 1985 to seek the remains of dissidents who vanished in the 1970s and ’80s during an urban guerrilla war. The military yielded after general strikes led to a restoration of the Constitution and elections.