A Conversation with Jose “Pepe” Mujica
The Uruguayan leftist and former president died on May 13th. In this article, first published in 2018, Manuel Iglesia-Caruncho, economist and former director for the Spanish International Cooperation Agency, recalls a 2015 visit with the iconic leader.
By Manuel Iglesia-Caruncho (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – “Pepe” Mujica was waiting for us in the neglected garden of his chacra [farm] on the outskirts of Montevideo. We visitors sat down on a pair of wooden benches placed there, on either side of a rustic table that Pepe’s exiled comrades in Paraguay had given him. Carved on it is the slogan “Pepe Mujica and 609,” the number associated with the political party whose ticket he headed up several times, culminating in his election as President of Uruguay. There’s also a five-point star, symbol of the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, the guerrilla group he belonged to.
The visit had been organized by Diego Canepa, head of the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation and “prosecretary” of the Presidency – a kind of “right-hand man.” A small number of people from the international aid world have the privilege of sharing the venue with me. “Diego, go over to the kitchen and bring some beers and glasses,” Mujica asks him. Canepa returns with the drinks and jokes: “Now you see what kind of work we Ministers do in Uruguay.” Although we’re at the home of the Uruguayan president – in this case, still his permanent residence – there’s no sign there of service personnel. The only visible indication that an important figure lives here is a police car, parked discretely near the farm’s entrance.
It’s clear to us that neither ostentation nor wealth are of any concern to Mujica. We don’t know if he’s actually the poorest president in the world, as the media has baptized him, but he’s certainly the humblest. Some time ago, a newspaper conducted a survey about Uruguayan politicians. One of those interviewed declared she didn’t know any of them. But after thinking for a few seconds, she corrected herself: “Well, actually there’s that guy – What’s his name? – the one that’s like us and talks just like us. That guy I like.” Naturally, she was talking about Mujica.
Our conversation with him was of the kind where you don’t want it to ever end. Mujica, his blue shirt half unbuttoned, looked relaxed and serene. He exudes calm, a reflective calm, clear of anxiety, but nothing like complacency. There’s just one week left before the end of his presidential period, when he’ll pass the presidential banner to Tabare Vazquez, his successor. Pepe turns his gaze to some pages he’s holding in his hands and explains they were sent by a friend from Switzerland. His reading of them has brought him back to some of the reflections he’s always turning around in his mind.
The friend from far away talks of the welfare system constructed in the Nordic countries after World War II, and how it’s being transformed. That social democratic model, woven with an egalitarian spirit and the consensus of the working class, is based on a simple recipe: high and progressive taxes in exchange for fair salaries, medical care, free, high-quality education, and a pleasurable retirement. An austere life, without luxuries or excess consumerism, but with health, education, and dignity.
“However,” Pepe’s friend has written, “it happened that one day, those good Nordic gentlemen began to wonder: ‘What if we paid less taxes, and we allowed ourselves other tastes that our reduced incomes after taxes don’t allow us today?’ And they began to look towards the parties on the right.”
“Isn’t it a little paradoxical that when people see their living standards improve, thanks to the left, they become more consumer oriented, more conservative, more rightists?” How can we understand this?” Pepe wonders.
This thought returns the old warrior back to his eternal musings about human nature. But – What nature? The ascetic and cooperative spirit that works to construct a more egalitarian society? Or that of the individualist, driven more towards personal enjoyment than to social well-being? Or could it be that human beings carry within them both these seeds, in permanent struggle? Mujica has no answer, but his instincts tell him that the social idea holds more weight within an individual.
One of the visitors notes that as a youth he studied anthropology, and in the department, they believed that from the remotest times humans held an instinct to possess, to appropriate certain goods for themselves, so that private property appeared to be a natural reality.
“Yes!” Mujica responds quickly, “but human beings were never solitary: what they conquered, what they acquired, was to be shared: with the family, the group, the community. But selfishness exists and is very powerful. You don’t have to tell me that! The tangles we got into in jail. Even though all of us there were believers, all socialists who shared everything. But – the mess that happened when it was someone’s birthday and a cake came for them! It would have to be divided up, but – How am I going to divide it into a thousand pieces? All these wrangles over a cake: imagine what happened with more important things.”
A bottle of rum appears, which helps relax everyone into a warm closeness. Mujica’s gaze rises over the trees to the sky. He appears to have gone far away in time. Is he seeing himself once more in the yard of the prison where he spent 13 years of his life? He tells us that when he and his comrades were young, they wanted to make the revolution in one fell blow. Later, they discovered it wasn’t that simple. He comments that he knew a man who built a new factory when he was 93. 93 years old!!
“What moves someone at that stage of life to begin something new? To get yourself into the mess of setting up a factory, fighting with the bank, the workers, the managers! What advantage can that have? And that’s not all,” he continues. “When he knew he was dying, he called in his children and told them that if he died, they better not even think about closing the factory. That man has different values than ours, but they’re necessary for building a society.” He finishes his thought: “Those who have no values are the banks, the investors! Those people don’t produce anything, merely appropriate the wealth. Why? What do they give to society? Nothing! But those who work and produce, even if they’re moved by the urge to profit, fulfill a function.”
Now that his term was ending, he laments leaving a number of things still undone. “Getting hands into the pockets of the rich. Having them pay the taxes they should! That’s the first thing. But I couldn’t get it done. I had to leave that behind.” Because another of Pepe’s characteristics is his impenitent democratic convictions. If there’s not enough support for some measure or political policy, you have to wait, you have to seek consensus. Nothing of: ‘It’s going to be this way because I say so.”
Maybe to lift his spirits, one of us tells him how we view Uruguay from a development point of view. “But, Mr. President, this country is growing economically, and at the same time poverty and inequality is being reduced. And you’re doing this in liberty, with respect for human rights. Very few countries in the world can boast of something like that.” His penetrating look seems grateful.
At that moment, the sound of a motor can be heard. Lucia Topolanski, Pepe’ wife, appears, looking more elegant than usual. She was on the campaign trail for the Montevideo City Council and had perhaps come from a TV interview. She comes up and greets us pleasantly but doesn’t stay. Mujica tells us that he didn’t want her to be a candidate, but that the party comrades insisted, and she had to accept. Duty is duty.
After a while, Senator Topolanski emerges from the house again, with a bundle of damp clothes that she hangs on the clothesline. He glances at her for an instant, maybe thinking about helping her, but he has us to attend to. Or maybe he’s remembering when she received him at the safe house in the Punto Carretas neighborhood, after he escaped from jail along with 110 other Tupamaros. At that time, she was part of the command structure charged with getting them out of the zone.
“We live with little, but we don’t need more,” Mujica says. “They ask me why I live in this house, which is so small and uncomfortable, when I could live in the Presidential Residence, where there are servants… But I’m not changing. Leave me here!”
The light through the trees that surround us is becoming more diffuse. Pepe continues his reflections. “What moves people?” For some, it’s ambition: for others, like him and his companions, it’s an ideal; to some others, it’s religion, the belief in a God the creator, merciful and all-powerful. At that moment he recalls his visit to Pope Francis. Pepe told him that he didn’t have the pleasure of believing in God, and the Pope answered him: “It doesn’t matter. I could still use a few more like you here at the Vatican.” With respect to bottomless ambition, the Pope told him something else. “I never saw a funeral procession followed by a moving van.”
It’s true!” Pepe declared emphatically, like he was grabbing us by the lapels. “You can’t take anything with you. So why so much fervor to accumulate wealth, if you can’t take any of it with you?”
The afternoon is dying, and we guests have to leave. Mujica says goodbye with great affection, or at least that’s what we feel. He remains there with the letter from his friend, turning over in his mind the Nordic issue and its implications for Uruguay. The next day’s work awaits him, to try and improve the life of the Uruguayans and bring them a little closer to the old dreams.
More than a politician, it seems to us we were conversing with a philosopher, a Socratic who – like Socrates himself – puts wisdom before wealth and lives with light luggage, asking the rest if they prefer to be free, or to tie themselves to the material commodities.
Some affirm that philosophy isn’t compatible with politics: that managing the public resources requires a good administrator more than someone who asks a lot of questions. But, having seen what exists – Who wouldn’t want to have a guy like Pepe for their president?
Republished in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.