Pepe Mujica and the Difficult Task of Forgiveness
Pepe Mujica spent a total of thirteen years in military dungeons, much of it in solitary confinement. Far from demanding revenge, he advocates for clemency.
By Manuel Iglesia Caruncho* (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES- Outside of Uruguay, Jose (Pepe) Mujica is best known for having been president of his country from 2010 – 2015. It’s also well known that during the years of Uruguay’s dictatorship, he was held totally isolated in squalid military prisons.
“El Pepe”was imprisoned for thirteen years, from 1973 to 1985. During that time, he wasn’t allowed to speak with anyone, and was kept hungry, filthy, frequently beaten, and humiliated with physical and psychological tortures.
The cruel and degrading treatment he suffered is well depicted in the movie “The twelve year night,” of Uruguayan director Alvaro Brechner (2018). Watch it, if you haven’t yet.
Pepe Mujica was a member of the Tupamaro guerrilla (Tupamaros Movement for National Liberation) and in honor of the truth, it must be said that they weren’t exactly little angels.
Liber Seregni, a leader of the Frente Amplio [Broad Front] Party who was also imprisoned by the military for over eight years despite his general’s rank, stated on one occasion: “I reproach myself for not having condemned forcefully enough the excesses of the MLN (Tupamaros), which were a violation of human rights.”
However, the questionable actions of the Tupamaros did not in any way justify the State terrorism – the worst kind of terrorism – carried out by the Uruguayan Armed Forces.
Pepe is also known for his austerity; he’s been called “the poorest president in the world.”
During his time as president, he donated 90% of his salary to the construction of affordable housing and other altruistic aims. It’s also known that he refused to move to the official residence set aside for the Uruguayan presidents, but remained on his small farm, as always.
The latest news, which also went viral, has been sad. On the cusp of turning 90, Mujica revealed that he’s suffering from an advanced-stage cancer and has decided to forego any further treatments.
Outside of Uruguay, it’s less well known that Pepe Mujica has been a backer, on several occasion, of applying compassionate measures towards the leaders of the military coup, who are now in prison. These are the same people who ordered the arrest of some five thousand people during the dictatorship – out of a country whose total population was three million – and caused the disappearance of some two hundred, while forcing 380,000 others into exile. In brief, they were responsible for condemning Pepe himself and others of his comrades to total isolation.
Even so, Pepe has declared himself in favor of having the army officials found guilty of “aggravated homicides” be deemed eligible to serve out the remainder of their sentences under house arrest after they reach a certain age. These officers are currently serving their sentences in Uruguay’s “Domingo Arena” prison, built especially to hold them in some level of comfort.
The possibility of house arrest is contemplated under Uruguayan law and has been applied in cases of other prisoners, including military ones. However, it excludes those found guilty of serious human rights crimes.
It’s worth pausing here a moment to recall that the Uruguayan dictatorship began with Juan Maria Bordaberry. He was a constitutionally elected president, but in June 1973 he dissolved the legislature and remained as dictator until 1976, with support from Uruguay’s armed forces. Bordaberry continued the struggle against the guerrilla movement and the repression of the social and labor movements that had begun years before, under the presidency of Pacheco Areco.
In 1972, the Armed Forces announced the defeat of the guerrillas, leaving it clear that the objective of the 1973 military coup wasn’t to fight against them, but to put into practice, in conjunction with the rankest part of the business classes, a radical program of economic adjustment that would end the social conquests of the previous decades. The latter had culminated with a social welfare government that had been in operation since the early twentieth century. At the same time, of course, the aim was also to do away with popular resistance to the adjustment plan.
Hence, before the “formal” declaration of a dictatorship in 1973, Pepe Mujica had already been detained, imprisoned, tortured, and held incommunicado.
During his years of reclusion, a “National Council” ruled by the “Junta of General Officers from the Three Armed Forces” appointed the President, among other high positions. Through that mechanism, first Aparicio Mendez and later General Gregorio Alvarez were named presidents of Uruguay.
When democracy arrived in 1985, the political prisoners were freed, Mujica among them. However, for the first three five-year periods under democracy, the country was led by Conservatives Sanguinetti and Lacalle, and there was no investigation of the crimes the dictatorship had perpetrated.
The tight “pact of silence” that the military leaders signed kept the public from knowing their misdeeds and also kept hidden the places where the victim’s bodies were buried. As if that were a small thing, in 1986 the “Law for the Expiration of Punitive Pretentions against the State” was approved – a complex name for an amnesty for those involved in State terrorism.
The left appealed on the grounds of unconstitutionality, but the Supreme Court ruled that the law was in accordance with the country’s Carta Magna. And later, when a referendum was organized to decide if that law should be repealed or not, the citizens ratified it. It wasn’t until the first term of President Tabare Vazquez (2005 – 2010) that the Justice system was able to send dictator Gregorio Alvarez, and another Army official or so, to prison.
In 2021, the judges found seven military officials guilty for the detentions registered in a clandestine torture center that the dictatorship maintained on military property.
Returning more directly to Pepe, after suffering total isolation in the military dungeons for so long, far from clamoring for vengeance, he has defended clemency. “I don’t want to have elderly prisoners who are 75, 80 years of age. Not only the military, no prisoners of that age. I didn’t fight to hold aged people prisoner.”
Hence, he promoted the possibility of extending the house arrest policy to the military officers condemned for serious deeds. The controversy he generated in his day about the treatment of these “military brats” reemerged a few months ago, after Guido Manini who was head of the Armed Forces during the democratic period, and leads the “Cabildo Abierto’ [“Open Forum”] Party, asked for Pepe Mujica’s aid in extending this benefit to the imprisoned officers.
Such a measure would have to be decided in Parliament and passing it wouldn’t be an easy task. The Left would be divided, with one part supporting it for humanitarian reasons while another, perhaps broader, segment feeling that the officers were torturers who don’t deserve this kind of a pardon at all, especially since they don’t show any indication of remorse.
That sector of the left believes that the imprisoned members of the military “aren’t some group of poor old men,” and that in order to display any magnanimity towards them they should at least confess where the bodies of the missing are. They were found guilty because they tortured, stole children, murdered… To that sector of the left, awarding them grace measures is out of bounds.
On the street, there doesn’t seem to be a favorable view for house arrest, at least noting the multitudinous demonstration held all across Montevideo every May 20th. Known as the “March of Silence,” the demonstrators demand to learn the resting place of the victims.
What, then, should be the conclusion? Should the military torturers rot in prison for neither demonstrating remorse nor confessing their crimes? Or, given their age, should they have the possibility of serving out the rest of their sentences in their homes?
It’s not a minor issue, although it only affects a small handful of people. On the contrary, it’s a question of great transcendence, for its relationship with how a society wants to be, how it wants to go about constructing itself: vengeful, “exacting justice” from those who have committed crimes, detestable or not; or merciful and generous, complying with the dictates of the Law, but also demonstrating its moral superiority over the criminals.
Let’s imagine for a moment, reader, that the new president of Uruguay, Yatmandu Orsi of the Movimiento de Participacion Popular – the same party as Pepe Mujica – should send to Parliament a bill allowing the judges to concede house arrest to all those in prison after a certain age. Now imagine you’re a Uruguayan deputy or senator. How would you vote?
Surely, on the one hand, you consider that State terrorism must never, ever, be repeated; that those involved in the military coup should know that the law will fall on them with all its force, and that they’ll serve out their full sentences. In prison, of course.
But on the other hand, you feel that if house arrest is approved, those detestable officers will continue being deprived of their freedom, though they be in their homes, and in that sense the law won’t be left a mockery.
And undoubtedly you believe that you’re not like them, nor do you want to be like them in any way, and while they were raised with hate, you wish to rise above that very negative sentiment.
In addition, wouldn’t you like to be just a little bit like those beings of elevated spirituality, capable of showing compassion and generosity towards those who don’t deserve it – especially towards those who don’t deserve it?
Beings who have wondered if an individual or an entire society can live in peace and harmony if they don’t leave behind the desires for revenge and other equally negative attitudes. People such as Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or Pepe Mujica himself.
Such a dilemma! Ah! – And you can’t abstain. According to the fantasy, during the voting no one will be permitted to leave the amphitheater. Hopefully your vote serves to bring out our best as human beings.
———
*This article originally appeared in Spanish in “Economía y Política.”
Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.