“I laugh when they call me a Marxist,”
Pepe Mujica
tells me . “I am not a Marxist, I am a Stoic.” And what does that mean? “It is living light of baggage, trying to cultivate a happy sobriety, applying that old principle: 'nothing too much'…”
I only have to look around me to see that he applies the principle quite rigorously. We are in the countryside, half an hour from Montevideo, talking in the kitchen of the small farm where the former guerrilla, former prisoner, former president of Uruguay (2010 to 2015) and, at 88 years old, favorite grandfather of the world left, lives. .
The kitchen is your living room and your dining room. The only concession to luxury, or the only exception to sobriety, would be the collection of bottles of whiskey, gin, rum, vodka, tequila and mezcal that adorn the shelves behind the wooden chair in which he sits.
Keep up the stoicism and light packing thing, I say. “And, deep down, it is a question of freedom, because
if I am subjected to necessity, I am not free
. The goal is to have time to spend on the things we like.”
And what do you like? “Walking in the field. “I like the countryside because I talk to myself there.” With himself? “Yes, I spent seven years alone in prison. No books. I had nothing to do. Nothing. And I had to learn to talk to the one inside me. And do you know what he told me? He greeted me a lot, he told me that when he was very young he had been very crazy. But the good thing is that he had read a lot and that's when I began to ruminate on my books.
“I learned to enjoy the inner self, to understand that the only miraculous thing there is for each person is to have been born, to live this adventure of life. There is nothing greater than the opportunity to live. You realize?"
And use your time well, I suggest.
The former president of Uruguay José Mujica and his wife Lucía Topolansky, in an image from 2023. Photo: AFP
"But of course!"
Mujica, with his appearance as an old teddy bear, is lively and smiling. He likes to talk. As lucid as when the moral vigor of his presidency placed Uruguay like never before on the world map,
he does not speak with resentment about the years of military dictatorship
that he spent in prison. Rather, he gives the impression that the experience strengthened him. Attentive to every word that the oracle of the pampas releases, grateful to be able to share time with him in his lair, I propose to change the topic from philosophy to politics.
"Go ahead!" he answers me.
Unlike the shrink that characterizes political discourse in almost any other Western country, not excluding noisy neighbors Argentina and Brazil, everything is respect, serenity, consensus and peace. And the facts prove it. In the rankings of the UN and other international organizations, Uruguay is second in the Americas, only behind Canada, in democracy, transparency and security. How have they managed to distance themselves from the madding crowd in such a way?
“I believe,” says Mujica, “that first of all it is about our history. Back in 1910, Uruguay had a project that, using contemporary language, we would call social democracy. It came in like a cruise ship, stayed and anchored. There was a generation of people led by President José Batlle y Ordoñez who modeled certain things--like public aid, like women's rights--that colored the history of Uruguay. To the point that the Swedes came to study it and transplanted things from here.”
Are you telling me that the celebrated Nordic model of democracy was inspired by Uruguay?
“They took things from here, for sure.”
Things that never left here?
“Except for the period of the military dictatorship, from 1973 to 1985, no. Look,
consensus was imposed in such a way
that those of us on the left cannot be so leftist because history mediates us. Neither do those on the right. Here comes a right-wing government and cannot abandon social policies. That barbarity that occurs in Argentina today: no, no. "It doesn't even cross their minds."
The former president of Uruguay José Pepe Mujica, at his home in Rincón del Cerro. Photo: EFE
Will he refer to President Javier Milei's social cutback policies?
“Yes,
what happens there is horrible
. But that's what happens when people get fed up. Milei is an extremist and voting for him is a symptom of desperation.”
Because of that permanently underdeveloped economy?
“And because of gigantic corruption at all levels.”
But how have you avoided catching the Argentine virus, having them so close? And not only with respect to economic chaos and corruption but also to the fierce polarization, the famous rift...
Peronism, "a religion"
“
Argentina is determined by the phenomenon of Peronism
, which is not an ideology, it is a religion. A mystique. Peronism is a consequence of a historical circumstance: Argentina was a very rich country, but with a huge social injustice. And then Perón arrives in the 40s, and he begins to distribute and distribute. He remained like God, of course. And that is not forgotten. He was engraved in the culture of a large part of the Argentine people. Then they made some mess. Then everything happened, but that memory remained and Peronism remains there. It's still there..."
Let's talk about religion, I tell him. Something that several of his compatriots have told me is that another reason why Uruguay is an oasis of civility is the atheism that defines it. What do you think?
“And, yes, along with that of social democracy, the idea of the separation of the Church from the State was established here more than a hundred years ago. Today only one percent of the population is a practitioner, by far the lowest rate in Latin America. Look at President Batlle y Ordoñez, there in the 1920s. "He was a journalist as well as president and in his articles he always wrote the word 'God' in lower case, never capital 'God.'"
Are you anti religion?
“Well,
I think that monotheistic religions have done harm to humanity
. "They have generated deep fanaticism and intolerance that extends to the political world."
But do many depend on the comfort that religion offers them, especially in poorer countries?
"OK. I perfectly understand. There are 4,200 religions in the world or so, and more than 60% of the world's population believes in something. No, it is not a factor in throwing it away. No no no. And furthermore, although religions were used by power to crush, they also helped to live with a little hope for what they did not know they would eat tomorrow. I recognize that the topic is complicated. “Religions can encourage fanaticism, but they can also be a brake.”
In an hour and a half we have gone from philosophy, to politics, to religion and its paradoxes. I turn off my recorder, I get up, Mujica gets up and we say goodbye. I am about to turn around and head down a muddy path to the car that will take me back to Montevideo when Mujica exclaims: “But, brother! I didn't offer you a drink! Sit down. I chose something from what I have here.”
I review the offering, as abundant as that of a New York cocktail bar, and point to an unopened bottle of mezcal.
“It looks good,” I tell him.
“You can be sure of that. “The Mexican ambassador brought it to me.”
Open the bottle and fill the glasses. After a while he fills them again. We enjoy, with the recorder always off, what he calls happy sobriety. This is Uruguay, where Mujica reminds me that the first World Cup was held, and for a good part of the hour and a half that I spend in his kitchen, we talk - of course - about football, the only field in which his compatriots lose their calm and They behave with the same abandon, or more, than the rest of humanity.