URUGUAY: Mujica’s legacy via quotes

The ex-guerilla’s 2010-15 term leaves significant contributions to the neutral South American nation via increased employment, declining poverty, rising income, energy diversification, among other social advances. Yet the 79-year-old José “Pepe” Mujica himself is known as a humble personality and – at least internationally and to 65% of the domestic Uruguayan population – an example for those practicing politics.

However, it is perhaps his poetic yet straight-talk modus operandi and planned (as well as unplanned) quotes that immortalize ‘el Pepe’s’ unique leadership style and persona most poignantly in the minds of many.

2010: FIRST MONTHS of PRESIDENCY:

Soon after Mr. Mujica’s inauguration, he spoke of his Emergency Housing Plan. It is in such simple, relatively non-historical occasions of which he inaugurated the list of some of his presidency’s most defining quotes: ‘We will demonstrate throughout this five years (his term) that something we do as a society - leading solidarity, smart and disciplined - is possible’.

2011: COUNCIL of MINISTERS:

Before accepting the Guantanamo prisoners and Syrian refugees, President Mujica said during a Council of Ministers meeting that: “Uruguay has to be a host country of refuge, asylum and open to immigrants from all countries”.

Five months earlier during a debate about Media, State and Society, he stated that, ‘Freedom is to be able to think differently, because to agree does not require freedom’.

2012: RIO+20 Summit:

President Mujica captured the world’s attention in his 10 minute speech at the international Rio+20 Summit in Brazil. There, he expressed the need to realize that the water crisis and environmental destruction involved reviewing the way we (specifically the first world) live and leave the consumer society: ‘Man does not govern the forces unleashed today, it has unleashed forces that govern man. And to life. We do not come to the planet to develop only so generally. We come into the world to be happy. Because life is short and we are going. And nothing is worth what life is worth and this is what is elemental’.

Futhermore, ‘Poor is not the one who has little, poor is to infinitely need much and want more and more’.

2013: UNITED NATIONS Speech:

José Mujica spoke for 45 minutes before the United Nations in New York, again capturing the attention from world leaders to leading trends on social media: ‘My personal story: that of a boy who like others wanted to change his era and world after the dream of a libertarian society without (socio-economic) classes. My mistakes: they are sons of my time…However, I do not look back because the real today was born in the fertile ashes of yesterday. On the contrary, I do not live to collect accounts or reverberate memories…It is possible world with a better humanity, but perhaps today the first task is to save lives’.

OTHER QUOTES:

‘Social changes are not just around the corner. They are not at hand in the immediate. They are a long collective construction, effort, work, mistakes, successes, commitments and sacrifices’. - July speech to 60 years of Moncada

‘I belong to a generation that wanted to change the world; I was crushed, beaten, sprayed (reference to torture and imprisonment during the 1970s-80s dictatorship), but I keep dreaming that it’s worth fighting for people to live a little better and a with greater sense of equality’. - May 2013 interview with”. The Breakfast on TVE

‘Politics is the struggle for which most people live better and live better not only to have more but in being happier’. - May 2013 interview with “The Breakfast of TVE”.

‘Even though the economy is globalized, our heart, our subjectivity cannot globalize’. - August ICPD.

‘One carries peace within them. I’ve already got the [Nobel] prize. It is on the streets of my country, in the embrace of my countrymen, the humble ranchos’. - May interview with ‘The Breakfast on TVE’.

‘Cry to the world’s poor that when they are cornered, come to this country (Uruguay). We do not pursue anyone and this country is empty; it can still fit thousands and thousands’. - in October at the First International Congress of Domestic Worker’s Network.

‘Don’t let the youth be stolen from within you. The outside inevitably takes time. But there is a pliable youth, in a territory inside, looking at ourselves, and is attached to a very simple and very small word: solidarity with the human condition’. - August ICPD.

‘With Europe unites us all, history, culture, traditions, affections, but if Europe keeps its doors closed to Latin America, the reality will force our country to turn to other alliances’. - May event Grupo Santander Spain

2014: OAS Meeting:

In May 2014, the President attended the Meeting of the Permanent Council of the OAS, where he declared that the world is undergoing a ‘brutal political crisis’. Mujica also denounced the abusive and uncontrolled management of major global financial authorities, where a handful of magnates control more than 40% of the world’s wealth.

‘Don’t tell us that there are no resources if it is possible to spend 2,000 million dollars per minute in military spending. Resources are indeed left over, what we do not have is direction. I do not share the idea that there is an ecological crisis; there is a brutal political crisis. The man has strength objectively as a species to change the fate of the planet for life, but these requires falling in love with life and understanding that above national life, there is life on the planet’.

‘The big question is: are we preparing the world for what is to come, or are living the inertia of a world that is?’

OTHER QUOTES:

‘When you buy something, make no mistake, the instrument is the silver you’re buying; but in reality you are buying time in your life you had to spend to get that money. It means that when you spend, basically what you’re spending is time of life that has gone’. – Interview with La Sexta journalist Jordi Évole

2015: CELAC SUMMIT:

In his last speech in January 2015 at the Third Summit of CELAC, President José Mujica criticized capitalism and consumerism of today. He also talked about poverty and destitution in Uruguay and the mainland, where he said that is not the fault of any system or foreign power. Concluding his speech, the president was given a standing ovation by contemporary presidents of Latin America and the Caribbean.

‘Humbly I could talk about poverty in my country, in my country destitute. But I’m not proud. I feel regret that my country has become destitute 0.5% and 10% poor. Because there should be no one (in poverty), because nature gave us many resources and only, perhaps, our inability and our disagreement explains it. I’m not going to hold accountable for US imperialism or European arrogance, because that is yours and the fund have been our inability’.

‘The truth is that my country has been very equal in the history of a continent whose main sin is (social/political/economic) inequality. So I feel pain and I feel the weight of social debt ahead’.

…and in his final speech as president: “I am not going, I am coming.”

OTHER QUOTES:

‘The ingress and egress to education is a form of progress and should also be a possible engine for social equality’. - November 2014 M-24 conference

‘The impossible takes a bit more, and defeated are only those who lower their arms and resign their dreams’. - December 2014 summit of presidents of UNASUR

‘Latin Americans have to be a reservoir of the best of human civilization, (we must be) a continent of peace, without hatred or revenge, justice, solidarity which is beautiful birth’. - December 2014 summit of presidents of UNASUR.