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May 2014 UNDILUTED Vol
21
UNDILUTED
Published on Thursday, May 15, 2014 by Common
Dreams
10
Reasons to Love
Uruguay
’s President José Mujica
by Medea
Benjamin
A
former Uruguayan guerrilla leader, President Jose Mujica is showing world
leaders a new way to govern. (Credit:
Creative
Commons
/ Pable Porciuncula / AFP/Getty)President
José Mujica of
Uruguay
, a 78-year-old former Marxist guerrilla who spent 14 years in prison, mostly
in solitary confinement, recently visited the
United States
to meet with President Obama and speak at a variety of venues. He told Obama
that Americans should smoke less and learn more languages. He lectured a
roomful of businessmen at the US Chamber of Commerce about the benefits of
redistributing wealth and raising workers’ salaries. He told students at
American
University
that there are no “just wars.” Whatever the audience, he spoke
extemporaneously and with such brutal honesty that it was hard not to love the
guy. Here are 10 reasons you, too, should love President Mujica.
1. He lives
simply and rejects the perks of the presidency. Mujica has refused to live at
the Presidential Palace or have a motorcade. He lives in a one-bedroom house
on his wife’s farm and drives a 1987 Volkswagen. “There have been years
when I would have been happy just to have a mattress,” said Mujica,
referring to his time in prison. He donates over 90% of his $12,000/month
salary to charity so he makes the same as the average citizen in
Uruguay
. When called “the poorest president in the world,” Mujica says he is not
poor. “A poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs
infinitely more, and more and more. I don’t live in poverty, I live in
simplicity. There’s very little that I need to live.”
2. He supported
the nation’s groundbreaking
legalization of marijuana. “In no part of the world has repression of
drug consumption brought results. It’s time to try something different,”
Mujica said. So this year,
Uruguay
became the first country in the world to regulate the legal production, sale,
and consumption of marijuana. The law allows individuals to grow a certain
amount each year and the government controls the price of marijuana sold at
pharmacies. The law requires consumers, sellers, and distributors to be
licensed by the government.
Uruguay
’s experience aims to take the market away from the ruthless drug
traffickers and treat drug addiction as a public health issue. Their
experiment will have reverberations worldwide.
3. In August
2013, Mujica signed the bill making
Uruguay
the second nation in Latin America (after
Argentina
) to
legalize gay marriage. He said that legalizing gay marriage is simply
recognizing reality. “Not to legalize it would be unnecessary torture for
some people,” he said. In recent years,
Uruguay
has also moved to allow adoption by gay couples and openly gay people to serve
in the armed forces.
4. He’s not
afraid to confront corporate abuses, as evidenced by the epic struggle his
government is waging against the American tobacco giant Philip Morris. A
former smoker, Mujica says that tobacco is a killer that needs to be brought
under control. But Philip Morris is suing
Uruguay
for $25 million at the World Bank’s
International
Center
for Settlement of Investment Disputes because of the country’s tough smoking
laws that prohibit smoking in enclosed public spaces and require warning
labels, including graphic images of the health effects.
Uruguay
is the first Latin American country and the fifth nation worldwide to
implement a ban on smoking in enclosed public places. Philip Morris, the
largest cigarette manufacturer in the
United States
, has huge global business interests (and a well-paid army of lawyers).
Uruguay
’s battle against the tobacco Goliath will also have global repercussions.
5. He supported
the legalization of abortion in
Uruguay
(his predecessor had vetoed the bill).
The law is very limited, compared to laws in the
US
and
Europe
. It allows abortions within the first 12 weeks of the pregnancy and requires
women to meet with a panel of doctors and social workers on the risks and
possible effects of an abortion. But this law is the most liberal abortion law
in socially conservative, Catholic Latin America and is clearly a step in the
right direction for women’s reproductive rights.
6. He’s an
environmentalist trying to limit needless consumption. At the Rio+20
Summit
in 2012, he criticized the model of development pushed by affluent societies.
“We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means – by
being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they
needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction,"
he said. He also recently rejected a joint energy project with
Brazil
that would have provided his country with cheap coal energy because of his
concern for the environment.
7. He has
focusing on redistributing his nation’s wealth, claiming that his
administration has reduced poverty from 37% to 11%. “Businesses just want to
increase their profits; it’s up to the government to make sure they
distribute enough of those profits so workers have the money to buy the goods
they produce,” he told businessmen at the US Chamber of Commerce. “It’s
no mystery--the less poverty, the more commerce. The most important investment
we can make is in human resources.” His government’s redistributive
policies include setting prices for essential commodities such as milk and
providing free computers and education for every child.
8. He has
offered to take detainees cleared for release from
Guantanamo
. Mujica has called the detention center at
Guantanamo
Bay
a “disgrace” and insisted that
Uruguay
take responsibility to help close the facility. The proposal is unpopular in
Uruguay
, but Mujica, who was a political prisoner for 14 years, said he is “doing
this for humanity.”
9. He is opposed
to war and militarism. “The world spends $2 billion a minute on military
spending,” he exclaimed in horror to the students at
American
University
. “I used to think there were just, noble wars, but I don’t think that
anymore,” said the former armed guerrilla. “Now I think the only solution
is negotiations. The worst negotiation is better than the best war, and the
only way to insure peace is to cultivate tolerance.”
10. He has an
adorable three-legged dog, Manuela! Manuela lost a foot when Mujica
accidentally ran over it with a tractor. Since then, Mujica and Manuela have
been almost inseparable.
Mujica’s
influence goes far beyond that of the leader of a tiny country of only 3
million people. In a world hungry for alternatives, the innovations that he
and his colleagues are championing have put
Uruguay
on the map as one of the world’s most exciting experiments in creative,
progressive governance.
This
work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Medea
Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org),
cofounder of Global
Exchange and CODEPINK:
Women for Peace, is the author of Drone
Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Her previous books include Don’t
Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart., and (with Jodie
Evans) Stop
the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide).
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