Although he stated that he deeply values democracy, the former president of Uruguay José “Pepe” Mujica emphasized that this system of government “is not perfect.” In his opinion, he has the advantage of “not guaranteeing a perfect government, guaranteeing that we can get rid of it, running the risk of choosing another one.”
In an emotional and philosophical speech at the forum of the Association of Montevideo Group Universities (AUGM), entitled “Human Rights and Contemporary Democracies” – which took place at the University of Chile -, Pepe Mujica maintained that “it is a lie that the peoples do not they are wrong”. In his words, “they eat the pills like anyone else, although they are the ones who pay the cost of the mistakes.” For this reason, he called for accepting democracy with its defects, but also for fighting and committing to it, “because it is easy to criticize, but if there is no human commitment behind ideas, nothing happens.”
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According to the former Uruguayan president, one of the current dangers is demagogy, “a ghost that accompanies democracy, because humans also make mistakes, we dream. And it seems to us that, as the Chileans say, it is easy to think that I am going to do this , but then ‘another thing is with guitar'”. This is because, he affirmed, among other things, humans “are not worried that everyone will be taxed, but he does not want to pay them.” In that sense, he launched: “And when you put your hand in to charge them taxes on the powerful, mamma mia!, how they buck”.
The former guerrilla member and former parliamentarian of the Uruguayan Broad Front assured that the latter “is a fact of reality” that is decisive and that it has to do with “the role played by the subliminal culture that the system has created.”
“A system is not sustained by the number of soldiers behind it, who support it, by coercive forces. A system is supported and comforted when it is capable of generating a subliminal, emotional culture that penetrates the whole of the people and of the people, who acquires behavior that is functional to the system itself,” mujica mused. And he added: “The consumerist society is a creation of a cultural nature, functional to the depth of the interests of the system itself and it is within us.”
According to the man who was president of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015, who recognized that his generation did not think so, “it is easier to change a material reality than a cultural reality.” He said that his generation believed that “by changing the relations of production and distribution, you would automatically have a better humanity. And we ate the pill,” he stressed.
“If culture doesn’t change, nothing changes a damn. There is no more important battle than culture,” he said.
“Economic sanctions usually have a worse effect than a war”
Another factor that endangers democracy, according to Pepe Mujica, is the interventionism of the great powers. “Let’s remember the number of coups d’état everywhere, the role of some embassies behind these coups, are threats to democracy,” he stated, explaining that currently the economic sanctions of some countries on others “usually have a worse effect than a war”. These “have a long-term poisonous effect, because the regime leaves the democratic guarantee by the wayside.”
“As Ignatius of Loyola said: ‘In a besieged fortress, any dissenter is a heretic.’ Political tolerance is lost, the entire atmosphere is poisoned, because you are with me or against me and I crush the rest, because things take on of life or death,” reflected the leader of the Popular Participation Movement – the majority sector of the Broad Front of Uruguay -.
Mujica recalled the case of Hugo Chávez and assured that “when the economic war begins, everything goes to hell, the reign of intolerance and harshness comes. And this happens everywhere. Economic interventionism declares sanctions, isolates the people , and ends up fucking the weakest in a society”.
“It is a disease that leaves wounds worse than a war,” reiterated the former president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), pointing out that “the Venezuelan people bled to death, spread throughout the world”, along with calling for foreign non-intervention in the oil country. “That the Venezuelans fix their messes among themselves, let’s return to the world of self-determination, let the countries fix their problems, we don’t get in from the outside.”
The conclusion of José “Pepe” Mujica is the following: “Democracy cannot stray from self-determination and democracy has to cultivate us. There is left, right and center. But we must respect each other. Do everything possible not to cultivate the hate. Because hate leads them to a mentality of fanaticism, and fanaticism is like love: blind. But love is creative and fanaticism ends up destroying us.”
“Take care of the democracy you have. It is not perfect. They have enormous inequality and we have a terrible social debt, especially in Latin America, we have to be aware. Worse, it is not just a problem of selfishness, it is also a problem of conscience,” he said .
Universities and Latin American cooperation
Regarding the role of the universities in the region, José Mujica pointed out that “there is nothing more important than the life of the universities, thought towards the future, but here the battle for intelligence is taking place.” To this he added that “the university that counts is the one that raises the quality of the town to which it belongs. It cannot be a hothouse flower, an intellectual delicacy from an exotic world. It is a commitment to the anxieties, pains and joys of its society, it is the thinking lumen”.
Along these lines, he referred to the collaborative development of the region. “That’s why I’m here. I am here because I am spending the last cartridges that I have left for a world that I am not going to see, and fighting for the integration of our America. There is no mass of world population like those of us who live from the Rio Grande down, that if we speak slowly, we understand each other”.
Regarding the social struggle as a way of life, Mujica added, “I am not here to talk only about democracy as an academic, I am still a social fighter and the world we will have will be the world that we are capable of creating and starting and fighting for.” , but people are needed to commit themselves, to give a cause to the existence of their life”. To do this, he warned, “we need time for affection, because we are not robots, we are not machines. We are a bag of water with sensitivity, the adventure of the molecule, the things that throb above the earth, that suffer, that cry, that have affection. We are not a stone”.
Rectoral Medal of the University of Chile
On the occasion, the former president of Uruguay received the Rectoral Medal of the Casa de Bello, the highest distinction of the house of studies, which was delivered by the rector of the campus, Rosa Devés.
“Throughout the years, you have known how to summon different generations and people from the most different spheres of society, in many parts of the world, through a generous and hopeful speech, because we know that this speech is consistent with your life , and then not only generates hope, but also respect and trust. In a society with so many fractures, we receive this ability to generate unity, using a language that crosses barriers and that is present here today as a gift”, said the rector of the University of Chile.
The distinction was awarded to the former Uruguayan president within the framework of this meeting of public universities, “with which we share history, principles and challenges, which, being so great and urgent, must be faced in collaboration,” said Devés.
Among them, he mentioned the drop in confidence in political institutions and the weakening of democracy in international indicators. “Faced with this growing lack of confidence in the institutions in Chile, complying with the citizen mandate to have a new Constitution is not only a moral imperative, but also a political obligation. The only way to peacefully channel our differences is through participatory, open and transparent understanding. The strengthening of democracy is only possible with more democracy,” he concluded.
It is worth mentioning that, prior to his presentation at the University of Chile, Pepe Mujica was with President Gabriel Boric. Both visited a nursing home in the Maipú commune, in a private activity proposed by the former Uruguayan ruler.
It should be noted that Boric has always recognized Mujica as a benchmark and considers himself “part of his seed”, as he admitted to Uruguayan radio in February during a trip to the country.
In addition, during the campaign for the presidential elections, which Gabriel Boric contested against José Antonio Kast, Mujica publicly supported the then candidate of the Appruebo Dignidad coalition with an appearance in his television advertisement: “He has the courage to have utopia, to think of a better world”, he stressed then.
