The president This Thursday, Gustavo Petro decorated the former president of Uruguay José Mujica (2010-2015) with the Boyacá Cross, the highest civil distinction awarded by the Colombian Government. in a ceremony that took place at the former Uruguayan president’s home on the outskirts of Montevideo.
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After reading the protocol text for delivery of the order, the Colombian president proceeded to place the band on Mujica, who was accompanied by his wife and former vice president and former Uruguayan senator Lucía Topolansky, and then posed before the press and entered the house without making any statements.
“Confers the order of Boyacá in the degree of Extraordinary Grand Cross to the former president of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay José ‘Pepe’ Mujica who has been an outstanding defender of peace and a firm promoter of dialogue”indicates part of the text with which the Uruguayan was decorated.
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This Wednesday Petro said that he has a “very great closeness from a young age” with Uruguay and compared his own career as a guerrilla with that of Mujica.
“We both ended up giving up our weapons because we understood that peace was the most important thing, the most revolutionary thing in a society”he declared.
Prior to the award, Petro presented Mujica with a flag of the M-19 (Petro’s guerrilla group) to which the former Uruguayan president, also with a guerrilla pastresponded with a “Thank you, brother.”.
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The Boyacá order honors and exalts national and foreign people and institutions that have stood out for their services to Colombia, the text states.
EFE