Whether well or poorly lived, life takes no prisoners – but the truth is, the death of Uruguay’s former president ‘Pepe’ Mujica, who died Tuesday aged 89, has shaken the entire continent and far beyond the Southern Cone.
Had Pablo Neruda not written Confieso que he vivido, it is certain that José Alberto Mujica Cordano could at the very least have signed it. But poetry was never quite his genre; his style was more epic – prose turned into action. Or better perhaps ethics, which has not yet attained the status of a literary genre but surely ought to someday.
The 40th president of Uruguay (2010–2015), Mujica both preceded and succeeded Tabaré Vázquez. He was a farmer, a leader of the Movimiento de Participación Popular and a former guerrilla fighter in the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros. His left-wing convictions were more than a youthful whim – they took him to prison four times. He managed to escape twice from the Punta Carretas prison in Montevideo, but the last stint – 12 years served between 1972 and 1984 – was the worst: he was accused of robbery, homicide and identity fraud, though no charges were ever proven, nor his detention justified.
In earlier armed clashes, his participation was more visible – at least six bullet wounds bore witness to his involvement, as did the bank robbery he later recounted himself and the “friendship with a frog” he kept while hiding out to avoid capture.
If nothing else, all that darkness gave him a flower: Lucía Topolansky, his political comrade, the love of his life and a “professional” forger, whom he only married in 2005, so they could legally share the same zinc-roofed house, with chrysanthemums and their limping dog.
“I belong to a generation that wanted to change the world. I was crushed, defeated, pulverised – but I still dream that it’s worth fighting so people can live a little better and with more equality,” he once said, reflecting on his past.
In recent decades, he was a pleasure to listen to. Giving simple lessons, even when no-one asked; preaching by example, even if it diminished those around him – this is what set him apart from other leaders.
For tourists, it wasn’t strange to see him in any restaurant in Colonia, paying with his own wallet, like any other diner – usually with his wife and without a security detail. Or waving casually from his ’81 Volkswagen Beetle on the streets of Montevideo (he lived on the outskirts of the city, in Rincón del Cerro). Simplicity was his way, and his personality was captivating.
“I’m not poor – I’m frugal, light on baggage. Living with just enough so that things don’t rob me of my freedom,” he would often explain.
So much so that he was once called “the world’s humblest head of state.” He donated 70 percent of his income as ex-president to charities and small-scale entrepreneurs; another portion went to his political party “because I owe what I am to my party.”
Happiness and people
To truly know people, there’s nothing better than listening.
Four years ago, Mujica threw away his mobile phone – he felt it no longer served to communicate. It had replaced real words, real conversations, visits, gestures.
“They say that people who jog along the rambla eventually enter a kind of ecstasy where tiredness disappears and only pleasure remains. I think the same happens with knowledge and culture. There comes a point where studying, researching or learning is no longer an effort – it becomes pure enjoyment,” he once said.
“How wonderful it would be if such delicacies were available to many! How wonderful it would be if, in the basket of quality of life that Uruguay can offer its people, there were a good helping of intellectual consumption,” he added.
“Not because it’s fancy – but because it’s pleasurable. Because it’s enjoyable, with the same intensity as one might enjoy a plate of tallarines,” he compared.
“There’s no mandatory list of things that make us happy! Some might believe that the ideal world is full of shopping centres. In that world, people are happy because everyone can leave with bags full of new clothes and boxes of appliances. I’ve got nothing against that view – I just don’t think it’s the only one possible.”
Mujica always lived far from luxury, and although he was important, he didn’t feel he was. He believed the presidential system retained cultural remnants of feudalism: red carpets, armoured cars, protocol, cannon salutes.
“Once I went to Germany. They put me in a Mercedes-Benz. The door weighed about 3,000 kilos. Forty motorbikes behind, forty in front. I was so embarrassed! They have a house for the president. Four floors. To have a cup of tea you’ve got to walk three blocks. Useless! It’d be better turned into a high school,” he said in one of his last interviews, to The New York Times.
Changing times
Still, Mujica recognised the significance of the digital age. Raised with the radio, he witnessed the arrival of television, satellites, mobile phones and countless other marvels that left him astonished – “like those who saw fire for the first time.”
But he didn’t let it overwhelm him. “We need all Uruguayans – especially the uruguayitos – to know how to swim in that torrent. We’ll manage it if our kids learn to think logically and ask the questions that really matter. It’s like a two-lane race: up there, the ocean of information; down here, preparing for the transatlantic voyage,” he said.
He was worried about the youth, because he believed the modern world didn’t simplify life – it made it more complex. That’s why, although he wasn’t in favour of legalising marijuana use, he did it anyway. “Legalising marijuana isn’t pretty, but it’s better than handing people over to the drug-cartels. The only healthy addiction is love,” he said once, explaining the move.
Under his presidency, in 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalise marijuana, aiming to reduce the power of narcos and promote public health policy. Possession had been decriminalised in 1974, but US$20 million continued to flow each year into the insatiable pockets of organised crime, threatening the social fabric.
Two other measures moved in similar directions: legal, voluntary abortion (2012), not punishable within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (14 in cases of rape), was adopted eight years ahead of Argentina; in 2013 – following in the footsteps of Argentina’s example three years earlier – equal marriage rights.
Both reforms he explained plainly: “By legalising and intervening, many women can be persuaded to change their minds – especially those from the most vulnerable backgrounds, or those alone,” he said of abortion.
In defence of marriage equality, he said: “Gay marriage is older than the world. We had Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great. People say it’s modern, but it’s older than all of us. It’s an objective reality. It exists. Not legalising it is to torture people needlessly.”
In his final months – perhaps due to the abrupt turn of events brought on by radiotherapy – his outlook changed: “I don’t fit in the world of today,” he often told visitors.
And though his atheism remained, it regained a certain caution: “Sixty percent of humanity believes in something and that must be respected. There are questions without answers.”
‘What is the meaning of life? Where do we come from, where are we going? We can’t accept being ants in the vastness of the universe. We need the hope of God – because we want to live.”
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