El Viejo tupamaro - piauí magazine

His only sister had died on Wednesday. She was the youngest, and she was 71 years old. A week later, on August 15, he was expected at the Maroñas National Racetrack in Montevideo, and he was late. Pepe Mujica, the president of Uruguay, learned as soon as he woke up that the mother of a fellow politician had died and decided to meet him before his official appointment. For the second time in seven days, he was going to a wake. While we were waiting for him at the racetrack, María Minacapilli, his personal secretary for eighteen years, received a phone call. Renzo Pi Hugarte, a well-known Uruguayan anthropologist, had just died of cardiac arrest. María hung up the phone with an incredulous expression. Mujica arrived shortly after. He greeted the journalists with restrained friendliness before being approached by his secretary and told of the death of his great friend. Mujica is 77 years old. He is months younger than Hugarte.

That Wednesday, Mujica was supposed to go to Pan de Azúcar, a town of just over 6,500 inhabitants, 100 kilometers from Montevideo, to launch a program that gives children access to a foreign language course on their laptops. Today, in Uruguay, all 300,000 students in the public school system have a personal computer donated by the government. The president, however, changed his schedule the previous afternoon. At the racetrack, he signed an agreement for a training program for young people.

Pepe Mujica is a character who would fit into a gaucho tale as well as a novel about the armed left. He was a militant in the Tupamaros urban guerrilla group, was shot six times, and spent fifteen years in prison, eleven of which were spent in solitary confinement, where he even drank his own urine to keep from dying of thirst. He ran for office for the first time at the age of 59 and has never lost since – he was reelected as a senator and, for the past two and a half years, has been president of Uruguay.

Mujica was discovered by young people on the continent after announcing in June that Uruguay would legalize the marijuana trade. Another image widely shared on social media is that of a buena onda , high-spirited politician, the subject of a friendly report in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo , which called him “the poorest president in the world.” An article in the British magazine Monocle called him “the best president in the world” and “the unsung hero of Latin America.” Mujica lives on a farm called La Puebla, on the outskirts of Montevideo, in a one-bedroom house with a tin roof. He donates 90% of his presidential salary, equivalent to 25 thousand reais. The only asset in his name is a blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. On the Uruguayan presidency website, he states his official profession as “chacareiro.”

But it wasn't the good-natured Mujica who governed Uruguay at the beginning of August. It was winter, and Montevideo was cold and gray. The rainy weather was in tune with the president's mood. He spent the entire ceremony at the racetrack staring into space, with his elbow resting on the table and his chin resting on his hand. His index finger covered his mouth, as if asking for silence. He ate two cookies, squeezed lemon into his tea and drank it. He was sad.

When announcing that the ceremony was about to end, the mediator asked if Mujica would like to make “any reflections.” After a few seconds of silence, that’s what he did: reflect. He did not greet the distinguished guests, as politicians usually do, nor did he speak about the government’s achievements and projects. He simply approached the microphone and spoke about how society would be better if companies developed “social intelligence.”

A man who had no uniform or credentials—the same man who had arrived driving the official presidential car, a silver Corsa Sedan—told the press that Mujica would not be speaking. The president, who was wearing a gray blazer and a worn moss-green sweater, sat in the seat next to the driver. He left the door open, which seemed to be a code for reporters to come closer. Two issues were on the national agenda at that time: the rise in crime and a diplomatic dispute—yet another one—with Argentina.

Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, the least corrupt (according to the NGO Transparency International) and the safest to live in. Even so, the rising rates of violence are the problem that most concerns the population. This year there were 211 murders in the country. The number may seem laughable: it is almost the same number of people killed per day in Brazil. But it is already much higher than the 183 recorded in 2011. Domestic violence is also a cause for concern. There were 9,325 reports in 2011 and 12,004 so far this year. Sitting in the car, Mujica spoke about the loss of family values, but said that a psychiatrist could analyze the matter better. “Being president does not give us the credentials to know everything.”

The next question was about trade policy, and he responded with a saying: you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. “It’s easier to sell to your neighbors, who are close by. But, well… we have to shake off the slumber ,” he said. He was referring to the Argentine protectionism faced by Uruguay, which makes its living from exporting meat, soy, wool and dairy products. Before the third question, the driver threatened to drive off and Mujica closed the door. In the following days, the phrase about eggs was highlighted on several Uruguayan news sites and made the cover of a weekly magazine.

Pepe Mujica doesn’t mince his words, he swears, makes grammatical mistakes, and uses expressions that younger generations no longer understand. He often uses metaphors from rural life to explain his vision of government. At least once he had to apologize for his sincerity. During his presidential campaign, he launched a book called Pepe: Colóquios , in which he tells journalist Alfredo García that the Kirchners were “delinquent Peronists,” former president Carlos Menem was a “mafioso and a thief,” and the Argentines were “hysterical, crazy, and paranoid.”

He has never been so tough with the Kirchners again. Some Uruguayans even think he is too patient. His predecessor, Tabaré Vázquez, also from the Broad Front – the same left-wing coalition as Mujica – spent his term in office fighting with Néstor Kirchner, then Argentine president, over the construction of a pulp mill near the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, on the banks of the Uruguay River, the border between the two countries. The Argentines claimed that the mill would pollute the river and tried to block it, taking the case to the International Court of Justice. The payback came when Kirchner was later nominated for the General Secretariat of the Union of South American Nations: Vázquez vetoed his nomination.

On the other hand, Mujica lifted his veto when he assumed the presidency (and Kirchner took over the position, which he held when he died in 2010). He has treated Cristina Kirchner with courtesy, despite the fact that the countries are once again in a dispute over the Uruguay River. This time, the issue is over the Martín García canal, which needs to be dredged to allow larger ships to pass through. The project will cost 50 million dollars, and both countries need to decide on and pay for it, but it is of much greater interest to Uruguay, since the canal provides access to the Uruguayan port of Nueva Palmira. “What am I going to do, poke her eye out?” Mujica replied when pressed to be tougher with the Argentine leader. He says that from time to time he doesn’t mind “swallowing toads and snakes” for the sake of peace in the neighborhood.

Mujica claims to be a pragmatist and justifies himself by pointing out that Uruguay has lost every time it has fought with Argentina. But his excessive patience with his neighbor has eroded some of his popularity. Uruguayan writer Tomás Linn, a columnist for Búsqueda magazine, commented: “Mujica is doing just as badly as Vázquez in his relationship with the Argentines, but he wants to be friends. Vázquez was tougher. With one or the other, we lose the same. So at least he should not let the Kirchners conduct the relationship as if Uruguay were an Argentine province, because nothing irritates Uruguayans more than that.”

Uruguay has a historic feeling of being squeezed by the giants Brazil and Argentina – from one century to the next, it went from being a region of border dispute between two empires, the Portuguese and the Spanish, to a buffer state. It is a “cotton between two crystals”, as John Ponsonby, a British minister who was sent on diplomatic missions to the estuary of the Río de la Plata in the first half of the 19th century, put it. In addition to being smaller than Rio Grande do Sul, the country has a small population (it has remained at around 3 million for ten years) and an aging population. 19% of the population is over 60 (in Brazil, the figure is 11%). Added to this is the high emigration of young people, in search of jobs abroad.

Uruguay’s political establishment is also in need of renewal. The main opposition figures today are former presidents or heirs to families that alternated in power before the Frente Amplio took office in 2005. Until four decades ago, the country was a two-party system. There was the Partido Colorado and the Partido Nacional or Blanco – both of which include centrist and right-wing groups, with the Colorados originally linked to the urban business elite and the Blancos to large landowners. Founded in 1836, both are among the oldest parties in the world. The British Labour Party, for example, dates back to 1900. The Frente Amplio only emerged in 1971 and includes the entire left-wing spectrum, from communists to social democrats.

Tabaré Vázquez was the first president of the Frente Amplio party. An oncologist who, even as president, never failed to see his patients on Tuesdays, Vázquez is more popular than Mujica. In Uruguay, a term of office lasts five years and there is no reelection, and he is the most likely candidate to run in 2014. If the election were held today, he would beat the opposition candidates, who are expected to be senators Jorge Larrañaga, for the Blancos , and Pedro Bordaberry, for the Colorados . The latter is the son of Juan María Bordaberry, the president who led the 1973 coup d'état and died last year. Larrañaga was the vice-presidential candidate on Luis Alberto Lacalle's ticket when Mujica was elected in late 2009.

Luis Lacalle is a hyperactive man with an aristocratic air. He received me one August afternoon in his office in the Senate, where he keeps on the wall a photo of his grandfather, Luis Alberto de Herrera, the main caudillo of the Partido Blanco in the first half of the last century. He pointed out where I should sit and asked that the interview be recorded because notes “ are not reliable .” Lacalle was president at a time of neoliberal dominance on the continent, when Fernando Collor was president of Brazil and Carlos Menem was president of Argentina. Of Collor, he said: “He was a handsome boy, but ignorant.” The three of them, plus Paraguayan president Andrés Rodríguez, signed the Treaty of Asunción, which enshrined the creation of Mercosur.

In a half-hour interview, Lacalle criticized Mujica for not having a commanding voice. He said that the president is unable to fulfill his promises even though he has a majority in Parliament, and that the initiatives he implements are clientelistic. “There are 100,000 people earning salaries without working. They give the money and ask for nothing in return. Whether their children go to school or not doesn’t matter. It’s a monthly allowance, but a monthly allowance for the poor,” he said, clapping his hands together. The program actually requires that families who receive the aid keep their children in school. There are 412,000 children and adolescents who benefit from Asignación Familiar , a counterpart to Bolsa Família, created during the Vázquez government.

Most of the time, the senator stared at the walls or the floor. At one point, while he was speaking, he stuck his index finger between my toes through a slot in my shoe. I ignored the gesture. He laughed, then withdrew his hand and continued: “Vázquez is a more serious person, more like a French social democrat. Mujica is a more radical man. He invented a character who is more important than the person, the character Pepe, a folklore character,” he explained, in an English accent. Mujica “crosses the line when he goes to a political summit in old shoes,” he says. “It’s rude.”

Weeks earlier, the president had made a round trip to Brazil to meet with Hugo Chávez, Cristina Kirchner and Dilma Rousseff at the Planalto Palace. The meeting made Venezuela's entry into Mercosur official after Fernando Lugo was removed from the presidency of Paraguay by the Senate and the country, the only one that had not yet approved Venezuela's inclusion, was suspended from the bloc for disrespecting democracy. The following day, the newspaper O Globo featured a photo on its front page with the caption announcing a moment of relaxation between the three leaders, surprised by the state of José Mujica's shoes.

Before leaving home, he had commented to his wife, Senator Lucía Topolansky: “And I’m the one who’s going to have to behave myself today with those two ladies.” Even so, he didn’t choose better shoes than his worn brown leather boots. On the plane, he told his aides: “These aren’t the best shoes for a summit, but they make me comfortable.” Those who were with him at Planalto say that there was no comment about the shoes, but when the presidents posed, there was a piece of paper on the floor indicating where each one should stand. Everyone looked down to find their place and the photo was taken. Dilma, Cristina and Chávez may not have noticed the shoes, but the Uruguayan opposition saw them and didn’t like them.

In the past, Mujica was even less concerned with his appearance. When he was a congressman and senator, he would go to Congress wearing plastic boots covered in dirt. He would work in the fields early in the morning and arrive at Parliament with dirt under his nails, riding his Vespa motorcycle or his 1987 Beetle. His slovenly style, far removed from any formality, gradually gained the attention of journalists and infuriated the opposition as Mujica rose politically. When he was running for vice president on Lacalle’s ticket, Jorge Larrañaga said that if elected, his opponent would govern “under a vine, with two mutts who will let him know when the ministers arrive.” Lacalle also referred to the now president’s house as a “hovel.”

“ I invited him to have coffee with us, but he didn’t want to,” says Lucía Topolansky, Mujica’s wife, laughing about Lacalle. She and Mujica have lived together since 1985, but only got married in 2005, without a party, in their own home. Lucía is 68 years old and seems very much in tune with her husband: in addition to never disagreeing on politics, they wear the same short white hair and simple clothes. She chooses flat shoes, doesn’t wear earrings or paint her nails. The political saga between the two begins with their activism in the National Liberation Movement – ​​Tupamaros, when they wanted to end capitalism in Uruguay, and reaches its peak when she, the most voted senator in 2009, takes his oath as president-elect.

Lucía and Mujica had other comrades in the underground movement. Hers was killed. The first meeting between the two – “Ana” and “Facundo” – was short-lived. Mujica already knew María Elia, Lucía’s twin sister, but he only met his future wife three months before he was arrested. It was 1971. They both escaped from prison – he in an escape that entered the Guinness Book of Records for the number of escapees involved (111); she with 37 other comrades through the sewer – but were captured shortly after. “At that time, we lived each day, we lived by that philosophy. We had to enjoy the moment and that was it,” Lucía recalled in her office in the Senate, where she has only two employees and the walls are decorated with photos of Mujica, Che Guevara and Carlos Gardel. It was only in 1985, with the Amnesty Law, that the two met again. They lived with Mujica's mother in the house where he had grown up in Rincón del Cerro, just a few minutes from the farm he and Lucía later bought. Today they live with Manuela, a mongrel who only has three legs.

For a long time, neighbors say, the house was made of adobe (a clay brick) with a thatched roof. Lucía and Mujica only renovated it and put in a zinc roof when he was elected senator, and they were too tired to change the thatch every now and then. The farm is located in the Paso de la Arena neighborhood, on the western outskirts of Montevideo, an area of ​​small farms and small-scale industrial, agricultural and farming activities.

Ironically, Mujica’s house is located on Camino Colorado, behind tall trees that hide it from outsiders. The path leading to the door is dirt, and only two police officers were guarding the place on an August morning. In 2010, at the Encontro Internacional de Murgas – a type of carnival block popular in Uruguay and Argentina – the group A Contramano won with a plot and song that parodied the story of two guards who have to fend for themselves to protect a president who leaves without warning to do some shopping. One time, Mujica went with his dog to buy a new toilet seat. He ended up giving an impromptu speech (with the seat in his hand) to a team of third division soccer players who spotted him in the grocery store. Another murga group, called Agarrate Catalina, paid tribute to him with a song that goes: “ We need to cut his mustache, the hair on his ears, nose and neck/ Set his espadrilles on fire/ and give him a little dog that at least has four legs .”

Mujica did not want to live in the official residence, the Suárez y Reyes palace. But he and the farm had to undergo changes. The president was shaved and forced to wear a blazer – never a tie! Surveillance cameras were installed in the house and an alternative route was opened that connects the back of the property to the highway. Lucía and Mujica, however, do not live alone. Three other families live on the farm, on lots donated by the couple. Two of them they met through political activism. The third was experiencing financial difficulties and they decided to help. The couple's will states that the other families can continue living there after their deaths for as long as they need, but that the land will be used for an agricultural school that they are organizing.

In their home, the presidential couple lives only with their dog Manuela, who was crippled on one of her legs after being run over by Mujica himself while driving a small farm tractor. “There were friends who had children. I always chose to have freedom and I didn’t have it at that time. Later, they didn’t come,” says the senator, trying to get ahead of the questions: “But there are always children in the house.” In the same building, but with separate entrance doors, the couple lived in shelter when they had financial problems. After they started living on Lucía and Mujica’s farm, they saved money and opened a small glass bottle factory. When talking about her friends’ achievements, Lucía said that the couple’s third daughter was born on the farm. At that moment, she started to cry. “She’s 9 years old, she’s a musician. She plays the guitar.”

On the corner of Camino Colorado there is a grocery store and butcher shop, where Mujica shops. The owners, Roberto and Anabel, two Uruguayans with very light skin and eyes, have been neighbors of the presidential couple for nineteen years. “I can’t put myself in Lucía’s shoes because she is a woman and I am a man, but I became attached to her because one of the things that came with being tortured during the dictatorship was not being able to have children. After everything they suffered, forgiving their tormentors and building a country together? That is beyond my comprehension.” Roberto was talking about Pedro Bordaberry, the son of the Uruguayan dictator. Upon assuming the presidency, Mujica invited the opposition to occupy management positions in courts, such as the Court of Auditors and the Electoral Court, and in public companies. Three months ago, Bordaberry ordered his fellow party members to leave their positions after Lucía Topolansky said that if the opposition was dissatisfied, they should resign.

“They always look to the future,” adds his wife, Anabel. When she got pregnant for the first time, Anabel gathered her neighbors for dinner and told them the news. Shortly after, she suffered a miscarriage. It was 1994, before Mujica was a congressman. “When I lost the baby, Mujica drove by on his motorcycle and parked. I thought he was going to buy something, but he just came over and gave me a hug.” The two only call Mujica El Viejo [the old man].

During Carnival, Roberto and Anabel spent a weekend with Mujica and Lucía at the presidential summer house in Colonia del Sacramento, an hour from Montevideo. Estancia Anchorena was donated to Uruguay by Don Aarón de Anchorena, from one of Argentina’s most traditional families, on the condition that the president of the Republic use it for at least forty days a year. Mujica and Lucía Topolansky honored the agreement, but they did not sleep in the main house. They preferred a suite in an annex building reserved for employees. They did not feel comfortable in a “house museum,” Lucía said.

Negro Nievas, a retired nurse and mechanic who is Mujica's neighbor, also showed a photo album he took with his family at the ranch, on a weekend when he, his wife and children attended a barbecue with the presidential couple.

Nievas drives a blue 1975 Ford Falcon and has thirty dogs at home. He said they all had names, but he only remembered up to the ^18th . When we arrived to see the album, another unknown stray dog ​​was in front of the house and he let it in too. Nievas is 73 years old and has been friends with Mujica since he was 7. The two were neighbors and studied at the same school. When I asked him about their childhoods, he said that Mujica’s mother had a kiosk next to the school where she sold school supplies and flowers. Then he started to cry. He got emotional several times when talking about his friend. He still keeps his Communist Party membership card and has at home all the books ever written about the president, with dedications from him, all ending with: “With reason and heart, Mujica.”

“He’s a romantic,” political scientist Adolfo Garcé of the University of the Republic, who studies the history of the Tupamaros, said of Mujica. Garcé sees many similarities between the guerrilla logic and Mujica’s government. The first is pragmatism: “The Tupamaros were chameleons. If the environment changed, they changed.” In government, Mujica “is the same,” he says. The president also remains obsessed with people who have nowhere to live. He has sold public buildings, including an official residence in Punta del Este, to build affordable housing, and has even considered opening the Suárez y Reyes palace to the homeless for shelter during the winter. It is to the government’s housing plan, called “Juntos,” that Mujica donates almost his entire salary.

Garcé points out another common tactic used by guerrillas: when the president introduces a new controversial topic into the debate to divert attention from issues unfavorable to the government. When Mujica and the other political prisoners were preparing to escape from Punta Carretas in September 1971, the Tupamaros who were free carried out an action on the other side of the city. The police rushed there and the prison was left unguarded. The political scientist makes the comparison: by proposing that the state regulate the production and sale of marijuana, Mujica diverts the focus of the debate from the problem of public safety.

The government estimates that 300,000 people – 10% of the population – have tried marijuana or use it with some frequency. Possession and consumption of the drug are not criminalized in the country. The bill to legalize its sale was sent to Congress as part of a package of sixteen measures to combat violence. Legalization would give the State control over sales and would allow it to raise funds to develop treatment programs for addicts. In the Chamber of Deputies, other bills advocate legalizing the self-cultivation of marijuana, but there is still no agreement on the amount that would be permitted.

The government's proposal has been caught up in the bureaucracy of the legislative process and is progressing slowly, after the initial huge repercussion. The opposition and part of the electorate were left with the impression that it is yet another measure announced and not implemented by Mujica. “He speaks without prior preparation, he launches themes that clearly occurred to him at that moment. He doesn't have a team to rehearse with him, so he says something as a government proposal and, when there is no one to follow him or he realizes it is a mistake, he backtracks,” said former president Luis Lacalle.

A supporter of the National Party and a political commentator on El Espectador radio, Graziano Pascale was the first journalist, back in 2007, to say that Pepe Mujica could be a candidate for the Broad Front. “People got mad at me. Mujica didn’t have any teeth, he seemed absurd.” For Pascale, Mujica’s election doesn’t mean that Uruguayans have started to like candidates like him, who are more like the people. He would be a unique case. “Mujica is that crazy old uncle that every family has. Electing him president was a collective madness. His public persona doesn’t fit in with the normal life of Uruguayans.”

José Alberto Mujica Cordano is the first child of Demetrio Mujica and Lucy Cordano. His father died early and his younger sister, María, was born with intellectual disabilities. He was the one who always supported his mother, helping her plant calla lilies in Rincón del Cerro, today a district of Paso de la Arena, where her farm is located. Lucy also received financial help from her father, an Italian immigrant who owned a 5-hectare property in Carmelo, a region neighboring the presidential ranch of Anchorena.

In high school, Mujica was preparing to study law (which he never finished) when he began to lean towards the left. In his book Mujica , he tells journalist Miguel Ángel Campodónico: “At that time, I was a bit of an anarchist. Student activism somehow made me become more politically active. I continue to be an anarchist, I think I am quite libertarian, that is unquestionable.” At that time, he met two great friends: Renzo Pi Hugarte, the anthropologist who died in the second week of August, and Enrique Erro, who would later become Minister of Industry and Labor and who introduced Mujica to politics. He was a member of the National Party, and it was with this party that Mujica began to be active.

The young Pepe Mujica must have been the only resident of Paso de la Arena who subscribed to Marcha , an influential weekly magazine from the 1940s to the 1970s, with writer Juan Carlos Onetti as its editorial secretary. He learned to love the land from his maternal grandfather. He emerged from fourteen years in prison with the fixed idea of ​​owning a small farm. His father – also from Carmelo, an area heavily influenced by Buenos Aires (even today, most of the tourists in Colonia del Sacramento are from Buenos Aires) – was a Peronist nationalist. Mujica remembers seeing the image of Juan Domingo Perón the first time he watched television.

The National Liberation Movement – ​​Tupamaros (MLN-T) emerged in 1965, bringing together anarchists and socialists from various currents inspired by the Cuban Revolution of Che Guevara and the Castro brothers in 1959. When he joined the group, Mujica was linked to the Popular Union, a left-wing organization created by dissidents from the National Party. In 1970, the Tupamaros numbered 5,000. Coups led by the military were popping up across the continent – ​​in 1964 in Brazil, in 1966 in Argentina. In Chile, the socialist Salvador Allende would be overthrown in September 1973, just two months after the coup d'état in Uruguay.

The Tupamaros are more controversial because, unlike the armed groups in Brazil that emerged during the dictatorship, they took up arms, kidnapped and killed even during democracy. When asked if he had ever killed anyone, Mujica replied that he was a bad shot. The civil-military coup in Uruguay, with the dissolution of Congress by Bordaberry, would only happen eight years after the creation of the Tupamaros movement. The guerrillas had already been dismantled and their main leaders, including Mujica, were imprisoned as “hostages” of the government. If the guerrillas carried out more attacks, they could be killed. “We were a social product,” says Lucía Topolansky. “But if Lacalle tells you the story of the Tupamaros, he will say that everything was sunny and spring when lightning struck the country.”

Anahit Aharonian, a Uruguayan activist who was imprisoned with Lucía, says she still has a Tupamara soul. “Being a Tupamaro means being someone who continues to fight for social justice. And change is not about giving people coins. I don’t want good capitalism; it’s not possible to humanize capitalism. We are against capitalism.” Anahit is an agronomist and welcomed me into her home, far from the center of Montevideo, wearing feather earrings made by Bolivian Indians. She is one of the leftists disappointed with Mujica’s government. “I thought he would form a government to the left of Vázquez, but he followed the same policies as his predecessor,” she said.

She said that when Mujica was Vázquez’s Minister of Agriculture, a Tupamaro comrade died and he arrived at the cemetery at a time when those present were criticizing the promotion of a soldier who had been denounced as a torturer. When Mujica approached, everyone fell silent. “I said: ‘Do you know why there’s been this silence? Because we’re talking about you, who promoted a soldier that we denounced.’” According to Anahit, Mujica asked: “And do you still believe in the justice of men?”

The activist finds it incongruous that Mujica dresses modestly, lives simply on a farm, preaches against consumption, but encourages foreign investment in Uruguay. Co-author of a book with testimonies from former political prisoners, called De la Desmemória al Desolvido [ From Memory Loss to Forgetfulness ], she also criticizes Mujica's wife for not accepting to talk about the past. "With Lucía, we were never able to work on memory issues. She always said: Don't bother me with this." The president even defended house arrest for the few military men imprisoned for crimes committed during the dictatorship because they are already too old.

In what Anahit sees as betrayal and sociologist Adolfo Garcem as pragmatism, Roberto and Anabel, the neighbors of Mujica, see the ability to forget the past in the name of a project. Linked to the right. He was a deputy at this time. And he said, 'Do you know what it is?

T Abario Vázquez wanted Danilo Astori, his minister of economy, was the Broad Foree Candidate for his succession. Mujica had been the most voted senator of the party, fought and gained the nomination against Astori (53% to 38%). From the social democrat Uruguay, the presidential plate. Vázquez was in the socialist party when elected in 2008 after vetoed a law of decriminalization of abortion that had been approved by the legislature.

“It was very hard to go against Tabaré Vázquez at that time,” says Senator Constanza Moreira. “But we were many who roamed the Mujica, a leftist and less technocratic option.” Constanza says he had to convince Mujica to apply. It was president, and he said that this was a tragic choice. We talked about the inability to decide his own destination when he is a committed person like him, ”said Constanza.

During the campaign, Lucía did as a secretary and press officer. Friends helped select with those who should speak or not, after spending years receiving unlinked journalists in the farm. Lula, from whom he is a friend, is his political model. Despite trying to detach his image of Chavez, he also maintains a good relationship with him, and was one of the supporters of the entrance of Venezuela in Mercosur.

As parties are more important than the personalities in Uruguay, Vázquez is the logical option for the wide front in 2014 because it is the best rated figure of the coalition. The alternative would be Daniel Astori, the vice of Mujica, responsible for the successful economic policy of the country. Now 13.7% of Uruguayans live below the poverty line, a five -point reduction in a year.

Still, the most recent opinion polls show that 39% of Uruguayans approve of the Mujica government and 49% sympathize with the president's figure. He had almost 20% more sympathy and approval. Partnership with an Argentine fund - are some of the reasons that explain the fall.

On Thursday, one day after Pi Hugarte's death, there was a demonstration in front of the Mujica Chácara-the first since the beginning of the government. Six trade unionists were expected to be received by the resignation of 180 employees from an agricultural company on the next day, a Friday, Camino Colorado was watched by two police trucks and a laundry car. Camp, but the day ended with the news of the death of another friend of Mujica, Lili Lerena de Seregni, at 96.

Mujica likes to philosopher. It is passionate about anthropology and botany. , Seneca, including the Aimaria - defined: poor is not what has little, but what needs infinitely much and more and more ”, spoke at the Rio+20 conference. It is an irony that, on the ground where Punta Carretes was, one of the prisons where Mujica was, works a shopping center today.

Among the nine former Tupamaros leaders who were considered “hostages” during the dictatorship, it is said that two more debilitated from prison, after the Amnesty Law: Pepe Mujica and Henry Engler. England was diagnosed with delirious psychosis, but in 2002 in Stockholm, at the World Conference on Alzheimer, .

Now 65 years old and director of the Uruguayo Molecular Imagenologia Center in Montevideo, Engler responded by email because he thought he and Mujica had come so far, after having almost gone mad. ”He said." Today we are crazy, but crazy with dreams. "

Near Christmas last year, Mujica visited the Vilardebó Psychiatric Hospital and spoke to doctors and patients about his moment of insanity. ”He said. Mujica said he asked for chemistry books to be able to copy them and organize his thoughts. So he recovered the reason and could, when he got out of liberty, to return to politics and reach the presidency:“ And here I am, crazy than before. ”