José “Pepe” Mujica: “People fall in love with siren songs”

2023-05-17 15:38:40

José “Pepe” Mujica is a character in contemporary history who describes himself as a social and political fighter. He is consulted by co-religionists, journalists and intellectuals who visit him at his house in Montevideo, and he is also a regular visitor to Buenos Aires. The former Uruguayan president arrived in the Argentine capital accompanied by Lucía Topolansky, former vice president. He receives Página 12 at the house of ex-consul Lilian Alfaro, in the Colegiales neighborhood, after having spoken with Álvaro García Linera.

The historic leader of the Broad Front always has some folksy word at hand, which springs from his life on the farm and long before he was a Tupamaro guerrilla, when at the age of 14 he sold flowers to help his mother.

Mujica talks about the crisis of the Nation-State, the siren songs heard by a desperate voter and the antidote he found for our peoples: integration. “Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru have to get together and establish a common policy to defend lithium,” he says. The veteran left-wing politician, an avid reader, has been studying the history of China and the ideas of Confucius for months, aware of the geopolitical importance of the Asian giant.

—In this election year in Argentina, to what do you attribute that after Mauricio Macri’s bad experience, the most extreme macrismo or the extreme right of Javier Milei has the possibility of winning?

—I am not a sociologist, I am just a social and political fighter, I think that the Argentine people have suffered a lot and are experiencing a very strong crisis of hope, and there are people who dream of magical solutions. Because that’s how human behavior has been in history. Let us remember what happened in Germany in the 1930s, when Hitler deceived an important part of a desperate people, because the conditions that were imposed with the Versailles Peace Treaty were unbearable. And it has happened with other towns. People fall in love with siren songs. I know that in life the impossible costs a little more. I know that Argentina is going to get ahead because the prize and the misfortune is the abundance of natural resources. And she’s going out for it, once again. But what happened to revolutionary France? With old historical parties that almost disappeared and (Emmanuel) Macron appeared, and soon after there were the yellow vests. Tomorrow it will change, because there is a civilizing crisis at the base, the nation-state is in crisis and this is a brutal change of era that is shaking us. We ask them to account, but this State has less and less power because international powers have appeared that are more and more important.

—And that they want a smaller state.

—They took power away from that State and now with the digital civilization, even more so. Any monster like Facebook, etc, etc, multinational companies, have more power than the State. The large financial circuits, international banks and commercial groups take away its power. We ask our State to account, to which we have passed the saw. Some believe that this is the last stage of history. I don’t. This is going to have institutional changes. For now, the parliamentary democracy we know is the best crap we could come up with, I agree with (Winston) Churchill. But it is full of failures that are not the institutions: we humans are the ones who fail. Humans are not gods, we have to deal with our flaws. This is going to change. The society of the future has a crisis of representation. The world of education, industry, law, I think that governments in the future will be made up of many governments and the central governments will be moderators, deciding what not to do. Anyway, that panorama is still very green.

—How do you achieve regional integration if each country is dealing with internal storms? Lula da Silva, a week after taking office, suffered a coup attempt; In Chile, the extreme right was in charge of the constituent process…

—I don’t see the integration for tomorrow. I’m thinking 25, 30 years. We have to learn to put up with each other, left or right. We have to learn to cooperate in order to compete with the world. If we consider ourselves in terms of right or left, we are going to come together in the year of the goalkeeper. We have to join interests and defend them. The summits are aspamento. Other things have to be built slowly.

– Do you agree with promoting a common currency?

“Yes, long term. Before we have to start trading with the perchenas currencies that we have and that the central banks do the arbitration. And if we can’t do it with the coins, barter for value. Do not depend on currencies that are from another side. We have to standardize the customs requirements that we have for food, have the same parameters throughout America to facilitate it. We must build complementary activities: we are not going to have an automotive industry, we can make brake pads. But for that we have to be sure that they buy it from us. And give the security that we bought him, and not buy cars from Korea. We must join our universities, it cannot be that an Argentine engineer cannot go to work in Uruguay or Brazil. We are crazy! We are captured by intelligence from Europe or the US. We have to connect our electrical energy in all border circuits, connect our health services for certain types of diseases, organ banks; we have to have our own mechanism. Integration is a long-term policy. With name, symbol and a date, so that all the schools of our Latin America teach that above the countries we make up a community with common interests from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. We have Secretary’s Day and we don’t have a day in which we celebrate the Latin American community. Teaching must include Portuguese and in Brazil, Spanish. Understand each other. It’s not magic, you have to build it. If we go to an international conference, we first have to talk to each other and come up with a joint position. If a Latin American is promoted for something, we all have to support him. Don’t be rams, we stepped on the hose!

There are things that are transcendental, like lithium. I believe that Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru have to get together and establish a common policy to defend the mineral and not let it work. Have a common policy. It doesn’t matter if the government is from the left or from the right, you have to give it value. Don’t make historical mistakes. We have to come together to defend ourselves, not to compete. Bringing together research, universities, political will is needed for that. We already have the Development Bank of Latin America in Montevideo and it is working.

—So you are betting on strengthening Mercosur and Unasur?

—Of course, and complementary economy circuits must be developed. That the smallest countries intervene in small things that serve to feed the industrial chains of more complex things in larger countries. But in turn we buy. We can manufacture some things for Argentina and Brazil, but we have to buy from them later, so that our interests come together. You have to win and win.

—When I asked about Milei, I thought that in Uruguay, the far-right Cabildo abierto party is part of the government of Luis Lacalle Pou. That is, there is already a local version that was launched.

—It is not like Milei, it can be more like Bolsonarismo. It is a nationalist conservative party.

—Cabildo abierto supported the initiatives of the National Party such as the retirement law. Do you consider that it represents a setback of rights?

—From the point of view of social distribution, yes, it is a setback. Salaries are not equal to what they were in 2019, and during the 15 years of the Broad Front government, salaries were adjusted to inflation and a little more, especially the lowest. Retirements are adjusted by the evolution of the average index. So if wages go up, pensions go up too. There was a pretext: the pandemic came. But from 2022, the exports were brilliant and there was no case. In the long term, the pension reform is serious. We think we have to change it. The President used an interesting phrase: he said that with the last trouble they had to approve it, they added water to the milk. We think that you have to put a lot of milk, but from a Jersey cow. You have to get more taxes, more resources.

—Next year there are presidential elections in Uruguay. The president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereira, said that the soul of the Front must be recovered. Match? Why do you support the candidate Yamandú Orsi?

—Simply because I have known Yamandú for at least 25 years, he was almost a kid. Because Canelones is like a small summary of Uruguay: it has all the problems and possibilities, it has livestock, a lot of farms, orchards, vines, it has industry, it has spas, marginal neighborhoods, cities. In short, he was for ten years Secretary General of the Intendancy and for ten years, Intendant of Canelones. He has generated the capacity to govern. We will see which candidate the Front chooses. We will accompany whoever you choose. It depends on ourselves to recover the enthusiasm. But the impossible costs a little more, you have to keep fighting.

—June 27 marks the 50th anniversary of the coup in Uruguay. What is your reflection from your own story?

—It’s been 50 years where a society tries to build its destiny and suffers the problems of a long dependency. We are descendants of two feudal countries, which achieved political independence but paid the price of economic and cultural dependence. And we are struggling to be ourselves. We have suffered history. We are very young countries. I have been studying the history of China for a few months, it is 5,000 years of unwritten history and 5,000 years of written history. And we have to deal with that world that is coming upon us.

—Do you think that we need to advance further in Memory, Truth and Justice?

Yes, little progress has been made. There is a pact of silence from the military and from civil society as well. We have to create the material, spiritual and ideological conditions to sustain Nunca Más.

Taken from Page 12