“In my garden I have not cultivated hatred for decades. Hate ends up stupidizing because it makes us lose objectivity in the face of things, hate is blind like love, but love is creative, and hate destroys us”, these were the words of Pepe Mujica, the former President of Uruguay, a simple, humble, humanist man, with a clear vision of international relations and a great social fighter.
“Everything that is born is born to die,” he said. And also: “We need hope, therefore, in spite of all the sorrows, I am an optimist. It is worth living life to the fullest. And young people should know that to succeed in life is to get up and start again every time you fall”.
In the sixties, he was a member of the guerrilla organization Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros, for which he was imprisoned between 1972 and 1984, during Uruguay’s civil-military dictatorship, accusing him, his spouse Lucía Topolansky and 8 other members of crimes such as kidnapping, robbery, homicide and document forgery. Mujica was imprisoned in an absolute legal vacuum, as he was neither tried nor charged. His extrajudicial detention could be considered for all intents and purposes a kidnapping by the military.
In 1989 he was elected deputy and later senator for the Frente Amplio (Uruguay), and then served as Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008. After holding the Presidency, he was elected senator again, in the 2014 and 2019 elections. He resigned from the latter position on October 20, 2020, retiring from political activity to devote himself to popular militancy and was the leader of the Movimiento de Participación Popular, the majority sector of the leftist Frente Amplio party.
Mujica has been described as “the world’s most humble head of state” due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of about 90% of his monthly salary of twelve thousand dollars to charities working on behalf of the poor and small businessmen. An outspoken critic of capitalism’s focus on accumulating material possessions that do not contribute to human happiness, he was praised by the media and journalists for his philosophical ideologies, who referred to him as the “philosopher president,” a play on Plato’s conception of the philosopher king.
Since 2005 he was married to Lucía Topolansky, historical leader of the Popular Participation Movement and also vice president of Uruguay between 2017 and 2020, with whom he had been romantically involved since 1972. In April 2024, at the age of 85, he announced that he was diagnosed with a tumor in the esophagus that accompanied him until his final transit.
Latin America mourns his departure, but rescues his example of coherence and honesty.
