José “Pepe” Mujica met with the former president of Chile Sebastián Piñera, in a meeting that took place one day after the former Uruguayan president met with President Gabriel Boric in La Moneda, during his two-day visit to the country.
It was Piñera himself who announced the meeting with Mujica. On his Instagram account, he noted: “After talking with Pepe Mujica, Gabriela Mistral’s words resonate with me: ‘I have a day. If I know how to take advantage of it, I have a treasure.'”
In the meeting held between Mujica and Piñera —held at the Pullman Hotel in Las Condes— the former presidents shared a mate and talked about the situation and political and economic projection of Latin America.
It is worth mentioning that both leaders have a political history. At the beginning of 2012, they shared a trip to Antarctica, during the first government of Piñera.
In 2017, in the book “A black sheep to power”, by Uruguayan journalists Ernesto Tulbovitz and Andrés Danza, Mujica said about Piñera: “He is not so right-wing. He is not a fagot. He is a capitalist, conservative, but he is clear that people must be given assistance. In Chile there is 30% right, right, right. In Uruguay, the dictatorship never entered as much as there. But he is not in that 30%. I feel comfortable talking to him, even though he’s on the front sidewalk.”
In addition, in 2021, in the midst of the discussion for the constituent process, Mujica said in an interview about Piñera: “I respect him a lot, I think he is a valuable man, with his way of thinking, he has the defect of being too rich and belonging to a world that is too comfortable (…) Everyone is born where they are. But he has not been a reactionary president, who takes the people ahead”.
