With information from AFP
Former Uruguayan president José “Pepe” Mujica considers Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela an “authoritarian regime” and believes that change will come “from within” “at some point,” he stated in an interview with AFP.
«I have intimate disagreement with authoritarian regimes. What I do not endorse is outside intervention. Venezuelans have to solve Venezuela’s problems. And in any case you have to help them. But don’t get involved,” said the former president (2010-2015).
“There will be some evolution within Venezuela at some point,” he assured.
Mujica denied that Maduro’s government, in power since 2013, is leftist or comparable to that of his predecessor, the late former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).
“Some of the Chavistas are outside of that and many are persecuted in the world,” he stressed.
Mujica, a former guerrilla who embraced democracy after spending 14 years in prison, most of it during the dictatorship (1973-1985), also deplored the “authoritarianism” of Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who fought against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza (1937-1979), governed in the 1980s with the FSLN, and returned to power in 2007.
“What happened in Nicaragua makes no sense,” he said. «It is incredible what the Sandinista revolution leads to, the old one full of stones and things. It’s monstrous. (…) It was a dreamy revolution against Somoza.
This is not the first time that Mujica attacks the dictatorial regime of the Ortega Murillo. He said that both the Sandinista and Chavista autocracy of Venezuela are “indefensible” because they “play at democracy” but do not respect it.
«Nicaragua and Venezuela They are indefensible as they are today. On the one hand, they play at democracy and do not have the courage to say: ‘We are for the dictatorship of the proletariat,’ Mujica said. «At the end of the day, that is what the Cubans decided. It will be a mess, but it is a political decision they made many years ago. These play at democracy, but when they don’t get the result… nah, it’s bullshit,” he said.
«I put the Cubans aside. Not because they are right. About 70 years ago they defined the dictatorship of the proletariat and a single party. And we have relations with China and Vietnam, and we don’t have any problems. So let’s bank that situation. “I don’t agree with that, because it doesn’t work,” said Mujica.
And he added: «What bothers me the most is when they play at democracy and then they fraud it. “That’s unbearable.”
«Authoritarianism in Latin America is a step backwards. We experienced it historically when the United States got involved everywhere,” said Mujica. “But now we do franks too.”
Mujica questioned former Bolivian president Evo Morales (2006-2019), faced with control of the ruling left with President Luis Arce, whom he accuses of wanting to “ban” him from the electoral race using the justice system.
“In life there is a time to arrive and a time to leave (…) What happened with Evo is inconceivable,” he said, and also criticized Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, twice president (2007-2015) and vice president between 2019 and 2023.
«There is the old Kirchner in Argentina, at the head of Peronism. Instead of acting like an old counselor and leaving new generations, no, she’s screwing around there. How hard it is for them to let go of the cake! “She gave birth to him!” Mujica exclaimed.
The former Uruguayan president is also concerned that his “old friend” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who governs Brazil for the third time, has no successor in sight.
«Lula is close to 80 years old. And it doesn’t have a spare. That is the misfortune of Brazil,” said Mujica.
