José “Pepe” Mujica, former President of Uruguay and one of the most prominent political figures in modern Latin America, has died. The press and social networks in the region are full of obituaries with words of gratitude and admiration. It seems he was a man admired, respected and adored by all, those who today so proudly publish their own photos in his company. By everyone, from wonderful people to the real scoundrels in life and politics. To Pepe, who was an atheist, almost the same thing happened as a couple of weeks ago with the death of Pope Francis.
I have no doubt that Pepe Mujica was a sincere, humble and big-hearted human being, and it is evident that there are not many people like him in modern world politics. May he rest in peace.
This reflection is not about his person, but about the political phenomenon, known as “Pepe Mujica”, it seems to me necessary and very urgent.
Let’s start by reading any Wikipedia. The texts that appear today on the internet will tell you that he was a former leftist guerrilla fighter, who after spending years in the prisons of the military dictatorship became a popular democrat and humanist politician, then became the poorest President in the world, who destined almost all his salary to social needs, never wore a tie, legalized the consumption of marijuana in Uruguay, drove an old Volkswagen Beetle, took care of his three-legged dog Manuela and wanted his ashes buried next to his grave, in a small family plot near Montevideo, where he lived in a modest house until his last days. Of course, such descriptions are a caricature for the ignorant, but it is what it is.
Pepe Mujica was part and witness of the heroic and terrible history of the Continent, he could remain in the memory of many as a fighter, a wise man and a philosopher, but unfortunately he became President.
To what degree of decomposition must our political civilization reach so that the mere fact that the President of the nation is not corrupt and even that he has had no interest in luxuries or material stimuli, is enough to make him the most important political news in Uruguay?
Transnational corporations and their political arm, the U.S. Democratic Party, loved Mujica’s presidency. The “Uruguayan leftist President” recognized the world defeat of the left, the victory of capitalism, the impossibility of doing anything serious for the moment, but he constantly called to fight for the ethical and human values that led him to be a guerrilla fighter in his youth. The bitterness of defeat, the utmost sincerity and the stubbornness of an old fighter lived in his words, but his government at no time represented a threat to the system he always denounced. For the system, his presidency was that of the ideal “leftist government”, reconciling the irreconcilable extremes that he nevertheless accepted, to the extent of his limited capacities and at the cost of his salary.
There was no worldwide media war against Pepe Mujica, as there was against Allende, Fidel or Chávez. He never represented any danger to the system. There were no changes in the economic model or implementation of mechanisms for economic redistribution, the political system was not changed and the media was not touched. His example legitimized many other pseudo leftists incapable of fighting. That is why today he is being mourned by both the turned and the elites.
Moreover, following Pepe Mujica’s example, the system created almost an entire electoral model for the “correct left”. Thus, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who was also a guerrilla in his youth (although, unlike Mujica, only a little), leads a “leftist government” that invited NATO to “protect the natural resources of the Amazon”.
Could that be why Trump mixed everyone up by putting them in the same bag and started calling Biden himself a “leftist” and a “communist”?
In the last decades the main political project of the transnationals, which as it is known rule the world, did not develop only as they did before, that is to say through the oligarchic right wing, but through “progressive” projects that aimed to confuse and demobilize the anti-capitalist social struggles from below. The slogan of this project was to “humanize capitalism” offering Latin America the social-democratic recipe that precisely in these times we see failing in Europe.
In Latin America we see how “progressive” governments – because they are extremely inconsequential and amorphous – have opened the doors wide to the extreme right. Nice social speeches lined with promises of democracy and tolerance hide business deals with the powers that be and corporations inside and outside the countries. In the case of Uruguay we can remember the case of transgenic soy in the hands of Monsanto that was never questioned by the government of Mujica nor by the environmentalist wokes that surely enjoyed at that time their joints legalized by his government.
Surely José Mujica was a wonderful man and he left us some wise ideas and thoughts that today travel the Latin American social networks. But apparently, with political power, as in life, being a good person is not enough.
