Pepe Mujica: “It is an honor to support the candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize for Cuban doctors”.
By Maribel Acosta Damas. Cuban journalist, specialized in Television. She is a professor at the Faculty of Journalism of the University of Havana and holds a PhD in Communication Sciences.
March 12, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Pepe Mujica, Minister of Livestock and Agriculture in the first government of Tabaré Vázquez in 2005 and then President of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015. Photo: Resumen Latinoamericano.
There is an old proverb used in Cuba: “God protects innocence”. So it seems with this interview, after all… Weeks preparing it with José Mujica, former Uruguayan president, tupamaro, guerrilla leader of the Frente Amplio. The man with nine bullets in his body, the one who was imprisoned for 13 years, the one who after the dictatorship continued contributing to his country and became Minister of Livestock and Agriculture in the first government of Tabaré Vázquez in 2005 and then President of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015; the one who is married all his life to Lucía Topolansky, also a guerrilla and current senator. The President during the passage of three transcendental laws: Legalization of abortion (2012), Legalization of equal marriage (2013), Legalization of the production and sale of marijuana (2013). During his government, poverty was reduced to 12 %, inequality decreased, allowed an economic growth of 75 % and important social investments in health and science were launched….
…Pepe Mujica was waiting for me this March 8, 2021. He is among the many Uruguayan personalities in science and politics who have nominated and support the candidacy of the Cuban doctors for the Nobel Peace Prize. Once again the bridge between Havana and the Chacra de Montevideo. However, this time the communications were fatal: the whatsapp call dropped again and again… but we did not give up. In the end, on the other side of the line there was a guerrilla fighter and on this side, a Cuban woman… What a duo we got together!
Pepe Mujica-. Hello, how are you? Nice to greet you, my dear!
Maribel Acosta Damas-. Hello! Very well! Nice to hear you too! How are you feeling?
PM-. Very well! All in good health…So far so good…..
MAD-. Today is International Women’s Day. Chance has wanted this day to be the day of our conversation….
PM-. Yes. This is a long process, it will still take some years to get out of the patriarchal society because it is a cultural problem and it is more difficult to change a cultural condition than a material one, but some progress is being made…
MAD-. In the midst of this complex time, how have you handled the pandemic?
PM-. At the beginning, we were coping quite well, but now it is getting very complicated. They have just started to vaccinate but we are very late and it is very bad in Brazil and this is affecting us to some extent… MAD-. What is the lesson we are learning from the pandemic?
MAD- What lesson is the pandemic teaching us? With respect to the lifestyle behaviors, you have talked so much about?
PM-. It makes it very clear that we are in a world where everyone gets by as best they can. It seems that everyone has decided to get by as they can and instead of assuming a collective global attitude, it is the opposite; and then the poor area of the world is going to pay a higher price and we are going to go out into a world that is going to be poorer, but it does not seem that solidarity is multiplying in the world in which we live. That is not fixed by the market.
MAD-. How can it be fixed then?
PM-. It will be fixed as always, by paying a sacrifice fee that could have been avoided. The pandemic also makes clear the importance of public health. There is no doubt about it. Here at the beginning of the pandemic, we managed quite well because our government spent a high percentage on health and that helped the country, but the average of what Latin America spends is only 3 points and a bit of GDP. Then, at the moment of truth, medical services collapsed everywhere, the installed capacity was poor because it is believed that the market is going to fix everything.
And countries have to have a good public service because you never know when there will be a fire and if public goods are not built in a stratified society, the market will respond to those who have purchasing power and the rest will have to suffer twice as much. The construction of public goods by the State mitigates social differences. Otherwise, those who have money will manage, those who do not have money will hardly be able to manage.
MAD-. In this scenario, you have expressed your public support to the candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize to the Cuban medical contingent Henry Reeve?
PM-. Of course! It has been a very noble task in the world over the years. How could I not support it! It has been one of the most important gestures you can think of in terms of effective solidarity from a small country with enormous difficulties, which has contributed to humanity everywhere. And that’s why I think it is a very worthy thing….
MAD-. You, who know about these networks… what do you think? Will they give it to you?
PM-. Ummm…! I don’t know… I am suspicious… but it is an honor to support the candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize for the Cuban doctors…
Photo taken from Cubaenresumen.org
MAD-. How is your relationship with Cuba, Pepe?
PM-. Now I don’t go out of my house… I haven’t been there for a long time but… the Cuban people are very open, they are a paragon of communication, friendship, solidarity service, human relations, joy of life… And the Cubans perhaps don’t realize it themselves… and our relations have very old roots… How can we not love them!
MAD- You knew Fidel Castro, didn’t you?
PM-. Of course! Obviously, I met him. I met him a few times. We talked a lot. We talked about agriculture, pastures, livestock… the last time I was with him he was already very old… I remember he made me drink sheep’s milk yogurt! And we were talking about a leguminous plant they had brought and he wanted it to reproduce because he thought it could be useful for cattle feeding in a tropical country. We talked at length, because I was Minister of Livestock and Agriculture in the first government of Tabaré Vázquez in 2005… we talked for a long time about these issues….
MAD-. What did you think of Fidel?
PM-. Fidel was a colossal figure. He shook my era. The first time I was in Cuba I heard him give a speech that lasted eight or nine hours. There were a million people there! It rained twice and the sun came out and that man was still speaking! Impressive! Hahahahahahahahahaha….
MAD-. You also talk a lot about Che… in your house there is a portrait of Che… did you see him when you were in Uruguay in 1961? Lucía Topolansky told me that she went to see him in Montevideo when he gave a conference whose moderator was Salvador Allende…
PM-. Yes, I was there. And I saw him in Punta del Este. In those days I was in a delegation of young guys who marched on foot from Montevideo to Punta del Este. The first time I talked to him was in Havana at the Chaplin Theater at the beginning of the Revolution….
… (communication interrupted!!!!! Phew! I ask him where he is. He tells me that he is locked in the kitchen of the house… I ask him to move outside to see if he can improve the coverage, where Lucía was when I interviewed her a few days ago… He does it… Nice Pepe!!!!… simple and great man!)
PM-... Now I am out in the open!!!!… Ahhhhh!!!! I have just been informed that Lula’s cases have been withdrawn!
MAD-. What great news! What do you think about this?
PM-. It is fashionable in Latin America to judicialize politics. Now Lula will be in better conditions for the political struggle. It is important because of what Brazil means and, besides, he could be a candidate again… of course it means the importance of popular mobilization around causes… indeed… In a country hit at this moment like no other by the pandemic, with the danger of the appearance of new strains of the virus that can complicate the lives of them and the rest of Latin Americans… I hope this news about Lula will help…
MAD-. Let’s go back to your meeting with Che in Havana at the beginning of the Revolution…
PM-. We were many young guys, in a greeting meeting… As a young man, I remember well that he was wearing military pants half rolled up on one side and not on the other… Che was very touching! I also remember that he had a somewhat acid humor, typical of the Rio de la Plata. I remember that here when he saw the beaches of Uruguay he said: “It will not occur to them to make the Revolution in summer in Uruguay with these beaches !!!!!”…
In my living room I have a picture of Che, and I have his letters in my memoirs, in a notebook. It turned out that Evo Morales wanted to make a faithful reproduction of Che’s wallet in the Bolivian guerrilla, the last one he had. Evo Morales had it made as a gift to his friends, and I have it. Inside there is also the facsimile copy of the campaign diary and a notebook… I keep it hanging… and I always show it to them when they come to visit. Che is still there. For us, it is an indelible attitude, no matter how much time goes by…
José “Pepe” Mujica and Lucía Topolansky at the Uruguayan ambassador’s residence in Havana, January 25, 2015. Photo: William Silveira Mora
MAD-. You have said that we are gregarious and utopian animals… do you still have utopias?
PM-. Studying a little anthropology, I have seen that in every age human beings have always invented something to believe in. And why did that always happen everywhere? It is the history of humanity, because human beings need to believe in something… And my utopia is the possibility of helping to build a little better world. There is no goal to reach. The real goal is the path, the struggle for meaning in human life. To be born is a chance. So we have to give meaning to life… inherent to human life, there is much that we receive when we are born.
We receive the inheritance of what is called civilization, which is intergenerational solidarity, which has been handed down through centuries and centuries, from the first discoveries to those who are working today in molecular biology.
We receive all this when we are born. So we have to try to leave something behind for those who will come after us. The world will not improve if there are no people who are concerned about its improvement. The world improves because of the work of people who make an effort.
MAD-. You have also said that if there is no intellectual honesty everything else is useless… Why do we need intellectual honesty today?
PM-. To get as close as we can to the truth because otherwise, if we remain prisoners of the consumer culture, of the market culture, we are going to confuse being with having… I can have many things and be frankly worse…
MAD-. Everyone is impressed by the fact that you have the same things as always: the old bicycle from 60 years ago, the car of the 1980s, the house you’ve lived in all your life… This detachment of yours for material things comes from where, from your poor childhood or from more than a decade in prison… from where?
PM-. It comes from a way of looking at life and the world… Look, think… this wasteful civilization is only destroying and will end up with an ecological collapse. We don’t need so many things to live. And we are harming nature because of our wastefulness. I’m not going to fix the world, but at least I’m trying to do my part?
Pepe Mujica gives an interview to Randy Alonso Falcón for the Round Table, Havana, January 25, 2016. Photo: William Silveira Mora
MAD-. And related to that, you have also talked about addictions, that the only addiction in the world worthwhile is love, because the rest are all plagues….
PM- Of course! Love is the lever of life. But let’s not get into philosophizing about it. Love is something that walks and exists. It doesn’t need definitions…
MAD- And how was your love with Lucia?
PM-. Ahhhhh perfect, perfect! Every age has its keys. It has passion and all its stages. At my age, it is a sweet and beautiful habit!
(In another interview, he tells a colleague: “Lucia lives plugging the holes, organizing. From time to time, she makes time to cook a pizzita, there is a feminine face of the event that if it does not exist, we are lost… It was a discovery that in a stage of life we found each other…”).
MAD-. When you said goodbye to the Senate in October 2020, you said that you were kicked out by the pandemic and a disease that has no cure. Do you mean that this was the end of your political life?
PM-. No. My political life will be as long as I am alive. As long as I am alive I will think and do something… hahahahahahahaha… But I do not want to take place because new wine must be put in old wineskins. There must be renewal…
MAD-. Why do you like talking to young people so much?
PM-. Because young people have a crisis of lack of grandparents, because the family has changed and grandparents are in nursing homes… old people are very absent. When you read The Iliad you must have noticed that the most awaited speech was that of Nestor, the legendary king of Pylos, the oldest man. In ancient times the only way to accumulate a little wisdom was to live.
Now there is the internet, there is the university, so it is as if the old people are superfluous, they are left over… It is a world that only wants young people, absolutely young, and then the old men and women disguise themselves to look younger. They all want to be young and they revoke themselves: they dye their hair, they remove wrinkles, they bother with fatness… in short…
Old people are on the way to being discarded. However, sometimes old people see farther because they have lived longer and if they are not yet crippled they have the function of trying to tell things to younger people that probably they are not going to understand them at that moment, but one day they will realize that they did not see part of reality… In Asian villages there is a great reverence for old people, but in Western villages there is no reverence. That is why it is good to retire…
The former Uruguayan president is known for his modest lifestyle and direct speech. Photo: EFE
MAD-. … but you are very popular among young people, including young Cubans?
PM-. What also happens is that I talk to young people. Young people are ashamed to talk about certain things. Those in their forties, fifties don’t talk about falling in love, about people falling in love and people suffering… about those little big things in life that are central. And young people are also concerned about those things. And I tell young people also to give meaning to life… because you can’t squander your life. It is better to live with sobriety and to have time to cultivate affection….
(…in the midst of the bad communications, Pepe has to go to his meeting, his companions are already at home… he gets on the phone again to say goodbye…)
PM-. A hug to the Cubans! A dear hug! In my country we say, whenever it rained, it stopped! And in the end you have to bet on life! I salute you for the effort of the vaccines and I hope that the Sovereign will be walking around Latin America! See you soon !!!!
(José Mujica, El Pepe, is 86 years old. He lives in the same simple and humble house he has always lived in the outskirts of Montevideo. He farms the land. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he and his wife, Senator Lucía Topolansky, are part of the Committees to support the poor neighborhoods of Montevideo, sending food they grow on their farm. In the chacra they also hold formal meetings with their comrades in struggle and work, according to Lucia herself, taking all measures to take care of themselves… El Pepe also talks on the phone with Latin American leaders and political leaders. La Chacra continues to be, why not, a center of utopia on this side of the world… and beyond…)
(Taken from Resumen Latinoamericano )
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