The Latin America Mandela
If you look for information on Uruguay`s president Jose Mujica, its much likely that you will find his name attached to the “World`s poorest president” tag, it`s been said that Mujica lives a modest life along with his wife, donating most of his earnings as president to humanitarian causes, in the middle of capitalist wild consumerism, Mujica knows that to live and let other live, you only need the basics, he practices what he preaches and tries to live with a modest amount of money, just like the common citizens of the country.
I think it’s a shame that Mujica may be remembered in the future as the president who legalized Marijuana in Uruguay, or perhaps the “poor president” living in a small shack and driving an old beaten VW, if that latter was the merit, many people live this way in America at the moment, I don’t see Mujica becoming a really strong candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, not because Mujica lacks merits, but because the man is known for all the wrong reasons.
Mujica must be seen with a completely different optic, in order to truly appreciate the greatness of his character, you must observe the past of the man, a former guerrilla fighter in the 60s, a violent and idealistic man who took the way of the gun in order to change his country like many in Latin America, attacking the civic-military dictatorship in Uruguay, sent to prison for his political activities and punished that way for more than a decade, a man who transformed himself in prison, just like Mandela, a man who learned to wait and to think, who also learned about the democratic way of fighting, must important here, and perhaps the reason I deeply admired Mujica, is that he learned to forgive, amnesty laws free him, but when he came out of prison, he didn’t search for revenge, he looked for justice, Mujica started to work within Uruguay`s parties of the left, and managed his way towards presidency, I must say here that unlike Mandela, when Mujica became president, Mujica didn’t changed his socialist ideals, as a matter of fact he applied them to his progressive view of the world, along with Lula in Brazil and Bachelet in Chile, Mujica conformed the true thinking’s man left in South America, a democratic left that conciliated political and economic sides, one concentrated in building a stronger and robust country in order to create enough resources for its correct distribution among people.
Most of all, Mujica was a humble, a honest man who recognized lacking all the answers, but was clever enough to look for them on others, he was not afraid of taking chances, he invited members from the left, from the center and from the right to build up his staff, privileging the country advance to ideologies, perhaps, his most famous stance is the legalization of Marijuana, done with the backing of scientific studies, placing him at the front of the libertarian governments in America, miles ahead of the retrograde Venezuela, Cuba or Argentina, but is not the only risky chance Mujica has taken, you can also count same sex marriage, cooperative housing development and the development of better educational system, as he himself described, his first, his second and his third priority, all this becoming a strong reminder of where the left can take people when done in a democratic, moderate, scientific, cooperative and progressive fashion, making us think that the answer is not on the extremes, nor in the center, but in the combination of what’s good in each position.
Without a doubt Mujica is heading Uruguay towards the future, and if recently deceased Nelson Mandela was an admitted “inspiration” to Obama, the president of the US should look at Mujica with even more admiration as the man is showing the true way to progress from an American point of view, yes, remember America runs from Alaska to the Patagonia and the left can’t live without the right, together they make equilibrium.
"Vamos a invertir 1ero en educación, 2do en educación, 3 en educación cuando tome posesión del mando del Uruguay. Un pueblo educado tiene las mejores opciones en la vida y es muy difícil que lo engañen los corruptos y mentirosos."
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